American Author Quotes

Christians have oppressed Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Pagans, and each other throughout their centuries of power, preaching religious intolerance as the word of Jehovah whenever they had the military, political, or economic power to make it stick — and then piously preaching brotherhood, peace, and toleration when they didn't.

Sometimes people do things that are complicated. For complicated reasons.

Lauren Barnholdt

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.

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.

Observation is like a muscle. It grows stronger with use and atrophies without use. Exercise your observation muscle and you will become a more powerful decoder of the world around you.

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

Robert Wilson (director)

If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward April, then we would know.

Love and money should properly have nothing to do with each other.

" 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

The moon drowsed between the trees like a great yellow moth.

Hallie Erminie Rives

The writers' strike a couple years ago was a bonanza for reality TV shows new and old.

Carole Nelson Douglas

Tell me thou all pervading mind,
When I this life forsake,
Must ev'ry tender tie unbind,
Each sweet connection break?

Ann Eliza Bleecker

I was simply restless, quite likely because of a dissatisfaction with the recent trajectory of my life, and if there is a better, more compelling reason for dropping everything and moving to the end of the world, I know not what it is.

J. Maarten Troost

under a soprano sky, a woman sings,
lovely as chandeliers.

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

Olen Steinhauer

Only once you destroy who you think you are can you embrace who you truly are

You think you got something big to say? Something momentous? Or is it what you had to memorize in order to escape the men with lightning in their eyes?

Grandfather / advised me: / Learn a trade / I learned / to sit at desk / and condense / No layoff / from this / condensery.

Lorine Niedecker

Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

'T is said that absence conquers love;
But oh believe it not!
I've tried, alas! its power to prove,
But thou art not forgot.

Frederick William Thomas

To know a little less and to understand a little more: that, it seems to me, is our greatest need.

James Ramsey Ullman

It's a sad world we live in when a human being leaves so little of a mark that no one even realizes it when he's gone

From the time we're born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and coconspirators, our role models and our cautionary tales,

Summertime
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin',
And the cotton is high.
Oh, your daddy's rich,
And your ma is good lookin';
So hush, little baby,
Don' yo' cry.

Neither awake nor in a dark dream are perilous blades just as they seem.

Dennis L. McKiernan