20th-century Author Quotes

I told my brothers I heard
You & mother making love,
Your low moans like blues
Bringing them into the world.

Yusef Komunyakaa

Things worth having don't come easy," Woods said. "You have to fight for it until you're tired of fighting, and then you take a breather and fight some more." He squeezed my shoulder. "Don't give up. You'll regret it.

But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn't be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.

We express true love in obedience to God and service to others- not reckless or selfish behavior- and we choose these behaviors.

Joshua Harris (pastor)

We should not seek to confirm God's will by the absence of adversity.

I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived

When someone is always looking over their shoulder, they're more likely to trip.

The familiar was usually invisible; how many people really noticed everything they saw?

Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.

Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.

I don't want to turn any of this into poetry / but / you're so beautiful / flowers turn their heads to smell you

Luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.

Don't sit back and wait for God to do it all. Ask for His advice, but be prepared to do the hard yards yourself.

Morris Gleitzman

Words have power," Isaac answered. Words begin and end wars. They create and destroy families. They break hearts. They heal them. If you have the right words, there's nothin on earth you can't do." - Crave the Moon

Twenty years is, after all, a long time. We are not the same people we were. Old friends, lovers, even family members: they are strangers who happen to wear a familiar face. We have no right to claim to know anyone after such a distance.

Egyptians are like camels: they can put up with beatings, humiliation and starvation for a long time but when they rebel they do so suddenly and with a force that is impossible to control.

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

Paul Di Filippo

The world always seems like it's going to hell when you're depressed. And, of course, it always is going to hell in some way. That's what makes it so hard to tell the difference between Armageddon and the blues.

No, every person on this planet has darkness inside them. Buried so deep that only you know it's there when your world is coming to an end. Oh, but it's there. It's always there.

Alexander Gordon Smith

Let me tell you, people go on and on about what a great idea electricity was, but I'm going to put toilet paper right next to the wheel and say those are the best ideas anyone's ever had. Scoff at it if you will, but try living for two millennia without it and then we'll talk.

No wonder you want to be a writer. How can you not, with all that behind you? You practically are a novel already.

Sylvia Brownrigg

I guess I had always sort of fantasized that a guy would see me and get past the ponytail and the glasses and the giant sweatshirt to discover how insanely awesome I am, then come and whisk me off into that magical teenager fairytale where everyone else gets to prance around.

The elite attack religious people and clergy with a vengeance.

Why would a man need both a wife and a mistress? A smart man would seek out and fall in love with a woman who can play both.

It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn't, and we weren't.