Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.
The impulse for much writing is homesickness. You are trying to get back home, and in your writing you are invoking that home, so you are assuaging the homesickness.
Maybe you have thought that doing... little kindnesses doesn't make much difference, but as Alma said, "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass."
I never felt poor. Our family euphemism was that we were broke, which I think psychologically gave you a different feeling. There were people far worse than we were.
When I wrote 'Savage Season,' it was three years later before I wrote the second Hap and Leonard novel. Whenever I wrote one, I never intended to write the next one.
You created this moment from what you thought and felt three days ago. What you are thinking and feeling right now will create your next moments. You cool with that?
If you can change your mind, you can change the world. Before you can be creative, you must be courageous. Creativity is the destination, but courage is the journey.
Heroism is not blind courage: it is selfless action. it is knowing the odds are stacked against you, but feeling that you must do what you do for the good of others.
A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose - a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.
Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.
The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.
In the book [Today Matters] I talk about successful people make important decisions early in their life, and then they manage those decisions the rest of their life.
Every man carries a wound. I have never met a man without one. No matter how good your life may have seemed to you, you live in a broken world full of broken people.
American travel writing is very healthy. I'm always flicking through the reviews and I see plenty of travel writing - and an impressive line up and continual demand.
He just waited until I stopped talking and said, 'Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives. So what's your theory?
Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy . . . well.
She waited for me to play out the string, to find the place where she had stopped and was waiting for me, to follow the breadcrumb tail until it dead-ended into her.
Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are... People are different when you can smell them and see them up close.
When you’re as charming and physically attractive as myself, it’s easy enough to win over people you meet. But getting strangers to love you...now, that’s the trick.
Just a small-scale cult of personality, maybe raise a geodetic dome out in western Massachusetts and make people wear jumpsuits and give all their possessions to me.
Companies have to take risks to get new knowledge, in a manner similar to how jazz musicians take risks when they go after a new approach to a tune or a performance.
The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.
I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name.
I've had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I've enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life.
At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.
My joy grows with every soul that seeks the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Remember, you have one life. That’s all. You were made for God. Don’t waste it.
I was a tried seaman when, for the first time, I set foot upon the soil of my country, and took up my residence where my people had lived for over two hundred years.
Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.
The Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.
I keep some portion of my early gleam; Brokenly bright, like moonbeams on a river, It lights my life, a far illusive dream, Moves as I move, and leads me on forever.
Nothing can be more readily disproved than the old saw, "You can't keep a good man down." Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down.
Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.
In fact, the only way to remain creative over time--to not be undone by our expertise--is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.
Have you ever noticed how many men in the Bible failed in the second half of life? Our enemy is so cunning that he will wait forty or even fifty years to set a trap.
To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.
You are like a captain navigating a ship... You must give the right orders, thoughts and images to your subconscious which controls and governs all your experiences.
As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us--but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensory experience.
Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.
After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
Be hopeful at all times and walk in faith, but above all seek love an walk in it. God is love, and when we walk in love we show Him to those we come in contact with.
As believers in Christ, we are part of Him-God the Father decided before the foundation of the world that anyone who loved Christ would be loved and accepted by Him.
I've discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God's Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.
And the stately lilies stand Fair in the silvery light, Like saintly vestals, pale in prayer; Their pure breath sanctifies the air, As its fragrance fills the night.
He shook his head in wonder. "You are magnificent." "I keep telling everyone that," she said with a nonchalant shrug, "but you seem to be the only one to believe me.
I knew right then and there nothing was ever going to change. It wouldn't matter if I was tall or short or fat or thin or absent every day. I was a loser from birth.
I don't believe in fate," he said carefully, "but... I do believe everything happens for a reason. That there is some plan, some meaning to this darkness we live in.
A good teacher is one who helps you become who you feel yourself to be. A good teacher is also one who says something that you won't understand until 10 years later.
Once an individual is given a taste of the gratification that comes from triumph, and the tools to bring it about, they will spend a lifetime in its ongoing pursuit.
The study of the traditions doesn't necessarily make you want to convert to another tradition, but it helps you to see your own differently and expands your outlook.
It's just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it's time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.