American Author Quotes

Once the data is in, the theory has to follow along meekly.

Michael Swanwick

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

Harry Emerson Fosdick

A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by night-fall.

Edward Dahlberg

Tears are God's gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow.

The principle of happiness should be like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent of things, but be a part of personality [and character].

William Lyon Phelps

As in so many cases of sexual abuse within the family, it is much more complicated than had it been done by a stranger.

Then when in silence thou doest walk,
Nor being round with whom to talk;
When thou art on the mighty deep,
And do in quiet action sleep;
If we no more on earth do meet,
Forget me not.

In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease:
Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace
Whose inhabitants have the eternal release.

William R. Alger

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

Another reason I wrote Fat Girl is that few writers about fatties write that even thin girls (and women and men) can, behind their bony walls, remain fat. They weigh 110; they think they weigh 200. How this happens is that if a person's been fat and gotten thin and maybe even stayed thin, she doesn't forget she was fat.

Mostly I think I've learned to trust God more. I mean, if I start getting worried or freaked, I just try to put it in God's hands. Sometimes I imagine God cradling the globe in his hands, and I tell myself that as long as I'm with God, the Creator of the universe, I can be comfortable and at home anyplace on the planet.

Obviously, all of us have been influenced by those around us.

A white truffle, which elsewhere might sell for hundreds of dollars, seemed easier to come by than something fresh and green. What could be got from the woods was free and amounted to a diurnal dining diary that everyone kept in their heads. May was wild asparagus, arugula, and artichokes. June was wild lettuce and stinging nettles. July was cherries and wild strawberries. August was forest berries. September was porcini.

Rage keeps the person who feels it company. It moves into the hollows left by grief and loss, and turns inside you like a dark furred animal that grows and fills you; it kills off loneliness and takes its place.

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.

Conversation succeeds conversation, Until there's nothing left to talk about Except truth, the perennial monologue, And no talker to dispute it but itself.

Baseball is the slow creation of something beautiful. It is the almost boringly paced accumulation of what seems slight or incidental into an opera of bracing suspense. The game will threaten never to end, until suddenly it forces you to marvel at how it came to be where it is and to wonder at how far it might go. It's the drowsy metamorphosis of the dull into the indescribable.

God is just, he said.
Just what? I asked.
Just watching.

Michael Kurland

The awkward truth, according to one study, is that 90 percent of 8-to-16-year-ol ds have viewed pornography online. Considering the standard climax to even the most vanilla hard-core scene today, that means there is an entire generation of young people who think sex ends with a money shot to the face.

I am telling you now: I might be young, but I am good. I work hard, and I'm a good person. I know what's right. I know what's wrong. And if you give me this chance-- if you just give me one shot to show you how good I can be, how hard I work, how much I believe in doing the right thing -- I won't let you down. I promise.

Streets like the one she lived on were no accident. They were the North's lynch mobs, she thought bitterly; the method the big cities used to keep Negroes in their place.

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.

No one can escape stress, but you can learn to cope with it. Practice positive thinking... seize control in small ways.

It takes a fierce devotion to defend your artistic space, and eternal vigilance over it, because the needs of others will grow like vines in your little plot and claim it back for the jungle.

Judith Ortiz Cofer

Take care not to listen to anyone
who tells you what you can
and can't be in life.