American Author Quotes

A fact has no "why." There it stands, self demonstrating.

Robert A. Heinlein

Generations should not be mingled for daily fare, she thought; they are really contemptuous of one another, and the strong individuals, whether they belong to the older or the younger, impose on the meek their creeds and opinions, and, if they are strong enough, brook no dissent.

I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.

Marguerite Young

Your skin is so soft. Smells like...-She had to tilt him to get this other arm free and hated knowing how badly she was hurting him as she did so. Sheer, unadulterated fear?

Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left over for the others.

Elizabeth Fishel

Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people's laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to candy. I kicked candy and now seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.

Robert Byrne (author)

Listen, if you choose to believe nothing else that transpires here, believe this: your body does not have a soul; your soul has a body, and souls never, ever die.

Bernice McFadden

You think you know someone by looking at his face but what can one face say about the thousand thoughts behind those eyes.

Marianne Wiggins

I snorted "oh, beauty. What's that good for?" Mary stared, her eyes round. "It won you the prince, did it not?" I snorted again, I prefer to think that he was captivated by my charming personality." I giggled to let Mary know I was trying to make fun of myself.

Margaret Peterson Haddix

Perhaps lovers aren't supposed to look down at the ground. That kind of story is told in symbols-and earth represents reality, and reality represents frustrations, chance illnesses, death, murder, and all kinds of other tragedies. Lovers are meant to look up at the sky, for up there no beautiful illusions can be trampled upon.

Even if a thing is not beautiful, it is living art if it is someone's experience. To do a thing as nobody else could have done it—if you can wrench that out of yourself—is style.

Mostly though, they waited. For the mail. For the news. For the bells. For breakfast and lunch and dinner. For one day to be over and the next day to begin.

Gone is gone. I never miss anything or anyone because it all becomes a lovely memory. I guard my memories and love them, but I don't get in them and lie down.

Louise Fitzhugh

Enough has been unrolled to demand your sympathy and aid.

Harriet E. Wilson

Oi'm always noble, sir; it's in my blood. 'As been ever since Oi ate that knight a few years back. Why?

Elizabeth Haydon

Feminism justified female victim power by convincing the world that we lived in a sexist, male-dominated, and patriarchal world.

Your boyfriend had a dream about potatoes and you're asking me to interpret it? I'm just old. Being old doesn't mean you know more; it means you ate enough fiber.

Jonathan Carroll

People should have all their big adventures while they're still under the age of fourteen. If you don't, you start to lose your passion for big adventures. It just begins to fade away bit by bit and then you forget you ever wanted adventures in the first place.

What is it with folks always talking about where they're from? You could grow up in a muddy ditch, but if it's your muddy ditch, then it's gotta be the swellest muddy ditch ever.

Jennifer L. Holm

Victory is freedom of mind and body.' I believe that is true. I would go further and say that victory is freedom of mind from body. Separation from the thing that imprisons us. Flight. Perhaps freedom from life itself. That is victory. Life is brutal. It is like this whip and these ropes. It hurts. It scars. But we must take it.

I found her lying on her stomach, her hind legs stretched out straight, and her front feet folded back under her chest. She had laid her head on his grave. I saw the trail where she had dragged herself through the leaves. The way she lay there, I thought she was alive. I called her name. She made no movement. With the last ounce of strength in her body, she had dragged herself to the grave of Old Dan.

There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don't regret a minute of it now. Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.

Jack Black (author)

All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Never judge people by who they date — your own sex life is confusing enough without trying to figure out someone else's.

Kim Gruenenfelder

That was the problem with getting used to people - you had to miss them when they were gone.