American Author Quotes

I almost tell him that I'd never be able to do something like that, just take out my instrument and begin playing on a street corner. But it feels to personal. Yes, I'm shy, but why bring it to his attention? I'm too shy to talk about how shy I am.

Andrew Clements

Anglo-Saxon barbarians. Arthur should have been made a Knight

William W. Johnstone

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

It was like love, he thought, this crumbling chapel: it has been complicated, and therefore perfected, by what time had done to it

"My father used to call all soldiers angel warriors," he [Lieutenant Carroll] said. "Because usually they get boys to fight wars."

Walter Dean Myers

What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future - a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save. No one can live my life for me. If I am wise I shall begin today to build my own truer and better world from within.

Horatio Dresser

When you became a student at Oxford you realized both your own mortality, in the flow of this near-millennium of students, and also the small particle of immortality that attaches to you when you begin to belong to an immortal place.

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

That meant I could come back whenever I could manage it. And she was telling me to go. She knew the decision was too big a load for me to carry by myself. She knew me through and through. She had eyes in the back of her heart.

Richard Peck (writer)

Enough has been unrolled to demand your sympathy and aid.

Harriet E. Wilson

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?

As I grew up I got cynical. I'd see Mother enthusiastic and involved with charlatans. Numerologists and astrologists who charged five hundred dollars for a 'reading' which was so vague you could twist the meaning any way you wanted.

We have souls. Sure we do. Otherwise we'd do bad things all the time. You know, like politicians.

MaryJanice Davidson

The hat on the table
in the dining room
is no pet trained
to sit still. Three
pearl-tipped spears and Beulah
maneuvering her shadow
to the floor. The hat
is cold. The hat
wants more.

I guess because twins have this mystique, and triplets - I think the normal sibling connection potentially can be very powerful, and there's this idea that it's even more powerful. It really is, not just someone like me, but another version of me.

Curtis Sittenfeld

The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?

It was any outcast's nightmare. If I looked carefully, I suspected I might find it beneath the black paint of the small acrylic by the window.

It was one thing to go into battle with confidence, another to believe the foe so easily defeated.

Richard A. Knaak

It is an easy thing to call names; any fool is equal to that... and the weapon of vituperation is generally used by those who lack brains for argument or are upon the wrong side.

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)

If you hear my idea but don't believe it, that's not your fault; it's mine. If you see my new product but don't buy it, that's my failure, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my fault too.

The most fundamental pride in the world is the pride you have in owning a little piece of land! You've got to live on your own land, walk on it, work in its dirt, to know the final pride of being free.

Janice Holt Giles

If you want the fire of God, you must become the fuel of God.

If you haven't fought for your life for something you want, you don't know what's life all about.

Robert Stone (novelist)