Quotes by American Authors - Page 81

There's always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn't mean there isn't a choice.
Jim Butcher
With good reason, love's messengers, Eros and Kama, are armed with bows and long-distance arrows. No being, god or mortal, can choose love. Love comes despite ourselves; and then, if we have not already done so, we have the task of becoming our selves so we may welcome love.
Diane Wolkstein
It would be easy to become a victim of our circumstances and continue feeling sad, scared or angry; or instead, we could choose to deal with injustice humanely and break the chains of negative thoughts and energies, and not let ourselves sink into it.
Erin Gruwell
I didn’t know then that young girls were a sort of poison, infectious to the man of age; and that men of age justly take woman of age to cure themselves of the diseases of youth.
Roman Payne
It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ — and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing — oh, that eternal hand!— a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I want to be Tragedy, I want to be Juliet, I want to be Romeo. Thus with a kiss I die.
Lee Smith
It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death... And they should! ...For they are in life.
Roman Payne
Slim is queer and though Nelson isn't supposed to mind that he does. He also minds that there are a couple of slick blacks making it at the party and that one little white girl with that grayish kind of sharp-chinned Polack face from the south side of Brewer took off her shirt while dancing even though she has no tits to speak of and now sits in the kitchen with still bare tits getting herself sick on Southern Comfort and Pepsi. At these parties someone is always in the bathroom being sick or giving themselves a hit or a snort and Nelson minds this too. He doesn't mind any of it very much, he's just tired of being young. There's so much wasted energy to it.
John Updike
There was an old belief that in the embersOf all things their primordial form exists, And cunning alchemistsCould re-create the rose with all its membersFrom its own ashes, but without the bloom, Without the lost perfume Ah me! what wonder-working, occult scienceCan from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore?What craft of alchemy can bid defianceTo time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The most aggravating thing about the younger generation is that I no longer belong to it.
Albert Einstein
What you post online speaks VOLUME about who you really are. POST with intention. REPOST with caution.
Germany Kent
Through the trees there was a motion, a person walking on the road. Isabelle watched as the girl - it was Amy - moving slowly and with her head down, came up the gravel driveway. The sight of her pained Isabelle. It pained her terribly to see her, but why?Because she looked unhappy, her shoulders slumped like that, her neck thrust forward, walking slowly, just about dragging her feet. This was Isabelle's daughter; this was Isabelle's fault. She hadn't done it right, being a mother, and this youthful desolation walking up the driveway was exactly proof of that. But then Amy straightened up, glancing toward the house with a wary squint, and she seemed transformed to Isabelle, suddenly a presence to be reckoned with. Her limbs were long and even, her breasts beneath her T-shirt seemed round and right, neither large or small, only part of some pleasing symmetry; her face looked intelligent and shrewd. Isabelle, sitting motionless in her chair, felt intimidated.And angry. The anger arrived in one quick thrust. It was the sight of her daughter's body that angered her. It was not the girl's unpleasantness, or even the fact that she had been lying to Isabelle for so many months, nor did Isabelle hate Amy for taken up all the space in her life. She hated Amy because the girl had been enjoying the sexual pleasures of a man, while she herself had not.
Elizabeth Strout
But I could not fully admit it, even then. The way Suzanne's face looked as she watched him - I wanted to be with her. I thought that loving someone acted as a kind of protective measure, like they'd understand the scale and intensity of your feelings and act accordingly.
Emma Cline
Mr. Bird flung his food away and leaped to his feet, glaring around at no one in particular. 'I am not a dog!' he shouted agrily, his gold earrings flashing in the firelight.
Tim Powers
It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.
Jon Krakauer
If my brother, Dægan, was still alive to herald this moment, I know he would have something poetically moving to say. But where I lack in speech, I make up for in determination. Let my actions speak for themselves, for I will have my vengeance. As the last living son of Rælik, I will defend my father’s honor and uphold his noble name. Rally the men for council—my Æsa needs me.”~ Gustaf Ræliksen
Renee Vincent
As the soil of a garden is richer and as the harvest of the garden bears healthier nourishment from the decay of leaf matter and banana peel and egg shell and human hair and chicken bone and fireplace ash, so the accumulation of death in teh ground of a city implants therein energies and powers.
Tim Gilmore
Behind a barbed-wire fence, a dirt road disappears into the distance in the pine trees and corners. Lost, dead roads, no ends or remaining purposes, power lines now dead and sagging and forgotten, grown high in weeds and young trees. The trees have entirely encased a speed limit sign, strange sight, nothing so pointless as a speed limit sign in the midst of dense woods, pointless and beautifully so.
Tim Gilmore
Simon laughed heartily. “I’m afraid the rest of us have to find talents to get our women into bed. Of course once they’re there, I have other talents that keep them right where they are.”“Handcuffs hardly count,” Christian said offhandedly.“If you mean the ladies cuffing me to the bed so they can explore Hunt Island,” he said, rubbing his chest, “…then point taken. These hands are capable of making any female climax by the mere brush of a pinky across her bare breast.”“I must have gone to the wrong island,” I said with a private laugh.
Dannika Dark
Water matted his black hair into spikes and peppered his skin with a fresh sheen. If I shut my eyes I could still see the one who bound me, his smile bright as the white sun as he emerged from our latest dip in the sea. I fought the sudden urge to bury my face in his chest and run my fingers through that hair.
Jennifer Silverwood
My friend Wicker once said to be careful what and how you say what you’re really thinking to a woman. After much screwing up in that department with Emma, I’ve learned it’s not what you should hide, but what you say that makes her react the way she does. If I am unable to make myself clear, as I so often do, it’s more likely going to go to pot if I try to explain how I really feel. Instead, I rework in my brain what she needs to hear. I don’t always nail it, but I’m getting better at it. And it’s always the truth even if it isn’t how I see it.Is it deceiving? No. It’s being considerate and aware that she is an emotional creature, and that for some crazy reason, craves my attention. I love to make her happy. My jumbled up mess of a mind isn’t important in the long run if it just confuses her. So I chose words carefully. When something goes right, I use it over and over again. -Ames
Cyndi Goodgame
I understand that you want “normal” by what you define it, but normal is what you make it. You could spend a lifetime in the house you grew up in and never once feel normal.
Cyndi Goodgame
Becoming a fae leader? Not on my bucket list.
E.J. Stevens
They’d never scared him, really.  When he was younger, he hadn’t known that there was anything different about them.  By the time he was old enough to figure out that no one else could see them, he was also old enough to realize that being dead didn’t turn people into monsters.  It just meant that most of them were lonely. 
Jacqueline E. Smith
Are ya glad to see me, or is that a roll of poker chips in your pants?
Susannah Scott
I'm so sorry I wasn't here sooner, but you'll have to forgive an old vampire for being a bit rusty in the dreamscape.
Sara Humphreys
She lifted a shoulder casually and slowly blinked."Where do you want to be?""With you," he answered without hesitation.
Donna Grant
Calm down. Ghosts don’t ring the doorbell.
Kelly Moran
It took a pair of ghosts to open my eyes.
Kelly Moran
Hey, ghosts are nothing to laugh at! Whether or not you believe in them, they’re out there. I’ve seen them. I’ve even heard them.
Jason Medina
I'd have your back off-site too, if you'd let me." ~Cain, Ghost of You
Kelly Moran
Kids these days," Dragos said quietly. "They grow up so fast."t"Supersonic fast," Pia said just as quietly.
Thea Harrison
Even now, as a vampire, the fear of addiction ruled her world.Would she ever be free?
Sara Humphreys
If you work in The Dark, you MUST live in The Light.
Mylo Carbia
Was there childcare for abused werewolves?
Jazz Feylynn
Be careful. The conditions are treacherous with mud-sucking tentacles pulling shoes and socks into the murky bottom while smearing grime on those who passed by.
Jazz Feylynn
Her wild race caused the dried-up ferns, thorny plants, and low-hung tree branches—away from the lake—to grab at our clothing in the mad dash over the narrow packed dirt through the trees.
Jazz Feylynn
Her blue eyes glowed headlight red into my leafy greens. Those eyes were freaky.
Jazz Feylynn
Yes, Dad collared me before I was even born. Nevertheless, he made me the one in authority of the collar and myself.
Jazz Feylynn
I swear it looked like she wanted her words to slither around us and go out the door unheard.
Jazz Feylynn
I'm sorry,’ she told him finally, because there was nothing else to say. His dazed expression slowly turned to a frown, but not of anger; it was a look nearer to disappointment.‘No, ye're not.’ Penor spoke without anger or venom, in a voice of pure reason. ‘Ye're glad it weren't Kerin. Better any of us, just so long as it’s not Kerin.
Helen Bell
I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches." by Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Claudy Conn
I began to doubt that I would ever know the truth of what transpired, or who those people really were. But all that changed one rainy August afternoon, when I was surprised by a dead man who had answers.
James Caskey
If we let all the negative roadblocks influence us then it's only a matter of time before we end up detoured, lost, or possibly stranded on the side of the highway. Our positive attitude keeps our battery powered and our gas tank full, so that we can make it in one piece to our destination.
Lindsey Rietzsch
First steps are always the hardest but until they are taken the notion of progress remains only a notion and not an achievement.
Aberjhani
If you're a child of God, you do not just "go around once" on Earth. You don't get just one earthly life. You get another-one far better and without end. You'll inhabit the New Earth! You'll live with the God you cherish and the people you love as an undying person on an undying Earth.
Randy Alcorn
Gazing around, looking up at the lofty pinnacles above, which seemed to pierce the sky, looking down upon the world,--it seemed the whole world, so limitless it stretched away at her feet,--feeling that infinite unspeakable sense of nearness to Heaven, remoteness from earth which comes only on mountain heights, she drew in a long breath of delight, and cried: "At last! at last, Alessandro! Here we are safe! This is freedom! This is joy!
Helen Hunt Jackson
It [the rocket] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.
Wernher von Braun
Many people don't fear a hell after this life and that's because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn't end. The kind of hell that doesn't burn your skin; but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can't see; but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It's where you feel freedom, where you're not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing.
C. JoyBell C.
We are not perfect. We are here to learn. Earth is one big classroom and God is our heavenly guidance counselor and teacher.
Molly Friedenfeld
All bowmen are caught between heaven and earth, born to discovery, choosing to love and raise their eyes high to a future that is apparent only through the strength of their hope.
David Paul Kirkpatrick
No ancient Jew was ever promised, or expected, a heavenly life. That was a wild and outrageous teaching of Jesus. Holy text never offers a heavenly hope--before Jesus. Think about it: No matter how faithful Adam would have been, he could never graduate to heaven. Going to heaven was a 'Jesus teaching.' It simply does not exist in Torah.pg xxvii
Michael Ben Zehabe
if you can't take a nap, if you can't take a day off, heaven's going to drive you nuts.
Mark Driscoll
Churches were never meant to be mental hospitals. They were supposed to be military outposts under orders to storm the gates of hell. Every believer is on active duty and called to serve a higher purpose with the rank of their blessings and talents.
Shannon L. Alder
Who said death is dead? He's fully alive, traveling around the world, throwing shadows and soaking in the sun. Visiting the young and old; placing bets and dicing regrets, for the worse or a better off place.
Anthony Liccione
He will protect me if it is his will. It is not up to me whether I live or die. Either way, Heaven is what'll wait for me - the light at the end of the tunnel.
K. Weikel
Heaven shows up all the time. But we plan our time so that we show up in other places.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio saying, "Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella.
Sarah Vowell
This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.
Rick Bragg
Eat Ice Cream. Read Books. Be Happy.
Carew Papritz