American Author Quotes

Men want a challenge, but they want a challenge they can win.

" Tis plain to me
As A B C,
My dear friend, Mr. Neff!"
"Oh, yes! but then,"
Says Mr. N,
"You know I'm D E F!"

Charles Follen Adams
Charles Follen Adams
My love for you won't stop with my leaving. Come an evening over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that'll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you.

The abyss is full of reality, the abyss experiences itself, the abyss is alive.

I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No.

The view from the window, particularly if you enjoy neon, is extraordinary.

Those who do not know how to see the precious things in life will never be happy.

People often choose to misunderstand if it makes life more interesting.

When there's more sick ones than well ones, by golly the sick ones will lock the well ones up.

Am I new minted by thy Stamp indeed?
Mine Eyes are dim; I cannot clearly see.
Be thou my Spectacles that I may read
Thine Image and Inscription stampt on mee.

The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get.

As a writer, I have always considered it my job to describe the world as I know it; to struggle toward whatever portion of the truth is available to me,

People are all the same. We need a personal reason to get our asses off the couch.

Olen Steinhauer
Olen Steinhauer
Propaganda is a weapon that the Confederacy wields best, and wields heaviest. It is their hammer. And when all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

How strange it was that a dream, once realized, could quickly turn mundane.

None of us ever escape the first few years of our lives. They make a mould into which we are cast, and though it may be broken, and we turned loose, some remnant of it, some intangible evil or lovely thing or both, will remain with us, like the odor to a flower, or the smoothness to a piece of ivory. It is part of the immortality of youth.

Lizette Woodworth Reese
Lizette Woodworth Reese
You'd scarce expect one of my age
To speak in public on the stage;
And if I chance to fall below
Demosthenes or Cicero,
Don't view me with a critic's eye,
But pass my imperfections by.
Large streams from little fountains flow,
Tall oaks from little acorns grow.

Wasn't no "death do us part" in slavery; wasn't even no "dead or sold" less'n two peoples made it that. Far as two peoples loving with each other, it was any handy place if you was willing —and sometimes if you wasn't; or you jumped the broom if the masters let you marry. But you couldn't help dreaming. Dreams was one of the reasons you got up the next day.

All my life, I knew, all my life I would be haunted by words from Shakespeare.

I've almost come to feel that it doesn't make much difference what you believe in — the thing that's important is a state of belief. It's much better to believe in nonsense than in nothing.

Sweet Genevieve,
The days may come, the days may go,
But still the hands of memory weave The blissful dreams of long ago.

Through my Invisible new veil Of finity, I see November's world — Low scud, slick street, three giggling girls — As, oddly, not as sombre As December, But as green As anything: As spring.

There's no sense to being Irish unless you know the world's going to break your heart.

To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.

Still, not much of a reason to live, is it? The fear of being punished for killing yourself.