American Author Quotes

Without discipline a body of men becomes rabble. Rabble dies, either on the battlefield or in a POW camp.

W. E. B. Griffin

One needs the invented, the spontaneous, the impromptu for ritual. Skepticism, that grain of salt, is inappropriate.

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

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

Walter Dean Myers

The elite attack religious people and clergy with a vengeance.

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)

The public never appears to tire of endless courses of strawberries and cream, and the theory that you run the risk of boring people with endless photo montages of the Chelsea Pensioners in their dress reds, or close-ups of a Pimm's Cup sprouting all kinda of flora, has yet to be proven. People like Wimbledon in the same way they like blue jeans or even their own spouses: for the pleasure yielded by their reliable sameness.

The line between him and the enemy had simultaneously blurred and solidified. Somehow, while perhaps it shouldn't have, this thought provided a strange sense of peace.

Kristina McMorris

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.

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

If we lose touch with our heart's wisdom, then no method avails; if we love, then nothing else is necessary.

[That] is the essence of poker: making tricky decisions based on incomplete information.

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

Closer to showtime, the jovial crowd now arrives in droves. Laughing. Smiling. Until they hear the melodic sounds of This Land Is Fagland, being sung by small children. With the most vigor, even the tiniest join in, big smiles, swaying their heads like it were the Barney the Dinosaur song. The chubby, red-haired girl actually jumps while singing—she's that happy.

Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.

Treasured Pagan Deities were misrepresented and distorted by the Christians for political and religious gain. Dressing their own Satan, who has remained one of the most opressive symbols of evil in our time, in the horned antlers of Cernunnos, a revered Celtic God, was one of the more recognizable ways Christians robbed Pagans of their way of life.

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.

You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.

Gennifer Choldenko

Learning is not easy, but hard; culture is severe. The steps to Parnassus are steep and terribly arduous.

John Jay Chapman

Enough has been unrolled to demand your sympathy and aid.

Harriet E. Wilson

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.

If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully.

Me? What am I? Nothing. The legs on which dinner comes to the table, the arms by which cocktails enter the living room, the hands that drive cars. I am the eyes that see nothing, the ears that don't hear. I'm invisible too. They look and don't see me. When they move, I have to guess their direction and get myself out of the way.

Shirley Ann Grau

Our attempts to trust others will often be frustrated, but that's because God never wanted us to trust others. He wanted us to love others but to trust him alone.

Picking the right name for the baby is beset with difficulties.... whatever name you choose, the baby, some years hence, will hate it anyway, and decide to have his friends call him Slats or Rocky...

Robert Paul Smith