Authors From The United States

"A chaste and lucid style is indicative of the same personal traits in the author."

"Where a generation ago people felt entitled to a chance at education, they now feel entitled to the credential affirming that they have completed a course of study regardless of their actual mastery."

"One's worth and self-regard ought to come from individual competitive performance, not from group identity. Pride based on clan or tribal connections is atavistic. It appeals to people who fear they cannot succeed as individuals, and by diverting their energies it all but ensures they will not succeed as individuals."

"It is a commonplace observation that liberals believe in the perfectibility of man while conservatives believe in the endurance of original sin. Superficially, that would suggest that conservatives take a more understanding and indulgent view of individual lapses, while liberals take a more harshly judgmental one. In fact, we know, quite the opposite is the case."

"In my mind, partial failure is always better than delusory success."

"No longer a mark of distinction or proof of achievement, a college education is these days a mere rite of passage, a capstone to adolescent party time."

"Ultimately it is the yearning to believe that anyone can be brought up to college level that has brought colleges down to everyone's level."

"The dominant mood of contemporary American culture is the self-celebration of the peasantry."

"In the unexamined American Dream rhetoric promoting mass higher education in the nation of my youth, the implicit vision was that one day everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional. We would use the most elitist of all means, scholarship, toward the most egalitarian of ends. We would all become chiefs; hardly anyone would be left a mere Indian."

"The human capacity for denial and rationalization is always shocking, but never surprising."

"Insight is the booby prize of life."

"There are only three things needed to eliminate human misery. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are."

"Levy’s style combines erudition with simplicity and earnestness with humor. The result is clear and compelling, accessible to lay persons and mental health professionals alike."

"It always is...until it's not."

"Winning isn’t as fun as losing is miserable."

"Emotion trumps logic."

"All’s well that changes least."

"Things could always be worse. In fact, the overwhelming odds are that they will be."

"To be neurotic is to spend one’s life perpetually replacing one worry with the next."

"I used to fear that taking medication would change my personality; now I fear that it won’t."

"There are two types of people in this world — those who think that there are two types of people in this world, and those who don’t."

"To the optimist, pessimists are neurotic; to the pessimist, optimists are deluded."

"Facts are like kryptonite to teenagers."

"Social psychology is the scientific study of the obvious, which invariably leads to conflicting results."

"When it’s bad, I get depressed; when it’s good, I get nervous."

"When a psychoanalyst takes on the role of a blank screen, all he really learns is how the patient responds to people who try to act like they’re a blank screen."

"Don’t worry, there will always be something to worry about."

"Nowadays, the absence of catastrophic news is great news."

"I would do anything to keep indulging...including quitting indulging."

"Intuition is usually the first word, and is sometimes the last word, but should never be the only word."

"I've been blogging — however irregularly — over at Amazon.com for a few years now, but I've always felt that arena was for the "official" JMD. It was as if I was standing in the aisle of a book store, greeting potential readers: sharing my thoughts, certainly — but also trying to get them interested in my wares. I'm hoping that this blog will be more like a living room: a little more casual and personal. A place where I can talk about, well, anything that comes to mind, from the trivial to the profound. And I hope to do it at least once a week. (I'll wait a moment for the laughter to die down.)"

"I'm glad the work doesn't come across as heavy-handed. I'm not trying to preach or convert, just explore interesting ideas and touch some hearts."

"I seriously considered putting Nine Lives aside (I no longer feel compelled, as I did when I was younger, to finish every book I start). I’m happy I stuck with it: as I continued reading, the lives chronicled — in clear, compassionate prose — became more and more fascinating, and, on occasion, heartbreaking: The collision between ancient and modern culture in India threatens to wipe away traditions that have gone on, uninterrupted, for thousands of years and most of Dalrymple’s seekers struggle with that knowledge in some way. There’s a lovely chapter about a Sufi devotee in southern Pakistan — she’s known as the Red Fairy — that illuminates the lyrical, mystical side of Islam. Considering the current mood in the United States, it should be compulsory reading for every American who thinks the Taliban and Al-Qaeda represent the totality of Muslim life."

"We’re not really the authors of our work: we’re channels, tuning into another frequency, another dimension, and bringing that information down into the physical world, where — using the tools, the talents and perspectives that are uniquely ours — we transcribe and embellish that information, transforming it into that wonderful creature called a Story. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether the transmission is instant or unfolds slowly, it’s the opening up that’s so magical. That moment of realizing that you’re connected to something so much bigger than yourself. I remember, years ago, when I was just beginning work on Moonshadow, standing in the shower — mouth open, eyes glazed, still as a statue — watching the ending of the series play out on the movie screen of my psyche. Make no mistake: I didn’t create the scene, I just witnessed and transcribed it."

"The impossible isn't a limitation, it's an invitation."

"Follow your heart, follow your dreams. If writing is your passion, put everything you have into it. Let that passion, that joy, lead you. In the end it might not lead you to exactly the place you thought you were heading...but it will absolutely lead you someplace wonderful. And don’t let the Nay-Sayers, the Practical People, stop you or wear you down. Follow your dreams...and you can’t go wrong."

"I’ve realized over the years that, with rare exceptions, most writer’s block isn’t writer’s block at all: It’s necessary time that allows the unconscious mind to do its deep work. The great “Ah-Ha!” moments don’t usually come at the keyboard. They come when I’m lying on the floor, staring into space (or banging my head against the wall in frustration). All of a sudden the Unconscious Camera turns on, a movie starts playing in my head-and there it is: The Big Moment. Or the Whole Damn Story. And, in many ways, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it."

"I love kids’ fantasy...everything from L. Frank Baum to A. A. Milne … Narnia to Wonderland to Neverland. These are magical stories that nurtured me as a child and then nurtured my own children, as well. What better legacy could a writer have than to continue that wonderful tradition of imagination and insight and adventure? Comics, of course, pretty much ignore the children’s market. I’ve been obsessed, for years now, with doing some projects that could bring that level of imagination and literary and artistic quality to the comic book form."

"As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m a Total Disnoid. Walt Disney is one of my heroes: it’s extraordinary what one man, armed only with will and imagination, accomplished. To be a part of that history, that legacy — in any small way — is really an honor."

"I understand the most profound and simplest Truth of all: Any time any of us reaches out, any time we pour even a drop of love, compassion, simple human decency (no matter how small; how seemingly insignificant) into the sea of earthly existence — we are, each and every one of us — the being called Mercy."

"Work is God's ordinance as truly as prayer."

"We need a spirit of adoption to take us out of the foundling hospital of the world, and to put us into the celestial family."

"The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny."

"When a sinner has any just sense of his condition, as alienated from a holy God, he will not be apt to think of the unpardonable sin."

"What hinders that you should be a child of God? Is not salvation free? Is not the invitation to it flung out to you on every page of the New Testament? Is not Christ offered to you in all His offices? and are you not welcome to all His benefits if you want them? Is not the Holy Spirit promised to them that ask Him? Nothing can hinder you from being a Christian, but your own worldly, selfish, proud, obstinate, unworthy, and self- righteous heart."

"Spiritual pride is the worst of all pride, if it is not the worst snare of the devil. The heart is peculiarly deceitful on just this one thing."

"Whoever believes in a God at all, believes in an infinite mystery; and if the existence of God is such an infinite mystery, we can very well expect and afford to have many of His ways mysterious to us."

"The Holy Spirit would lead us to think much upon our own sins. It is a dangerous thing for us to dwell upon the imperfections of others."

"There is no reason to believe that the Holy Spirit ever leaves awakened sinners, only as they leave the truth of God for some error or sin."

"It is a great truth, "God reigns," and therefore grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord; and, therefore, no sinner on earth need ever despair."