Women Authors From The United States

"Values that are expressed but that don't change behavior are not really values, they are lies that you tell yourself."

"I am sure that my codes of life may be very different from yours, but how do you know that trust, compassion, and beauty will not make this world a better place to be in and this life a better one to live? My codes may seem like a fantasy that can never be reached, but test them for yourself, and see the kind of effect they have in the lives of people around you. You just may start a chain reaction."

"Adam, we’re going to have lunch together next week, just you and I, and nobody else. And I want you to tell me all about your family... Adam, I just want to be your friend."

"It's not about that for me. I'm not trying to go out there and convert people. I just want to be an example. I want to live my life for God, and let other people take from that whatever they want."

"Mrs. Carruthers, I'm going to be an impact on this world."

"I was well aware of 's very problematic past, from its promotion of meritocracy in place of a management system to the horrible treatment and abuse of its female employees and other people from diverse backgrounds. I myself had experienced harassment on GitHub. As an example, a couple of years ago someone created a dozen repositories with racist names and added me to the repos, so my GitHub profile had racial slurs on it until their support team got around to shutting them down a few days after I reported the incident. I didn't get the sense that the company really cared about harassment."

"Rachel Scott, good to meet you, friend."

"It's like I have a heavy heart and this burden upon my back...but I don't know what ti is. There is something in me that makes me want to cry...and I don't even know what it is. Things have definitely changed. Last week was so hard...besides missing Breakthru...I lost all of my friends at school. Now that I have begun to "walk my talk," they make fun of me. I don't even know what I have done. I don't really have to say anything, and they turn me away. I was talking to [REDACTED] and I realized so much. I know what they're thinking every time I make a decision to resist temptation and follow God. They talk behind my back and call me "the preacher's church-going girl." Now [REDACTED] loves to drink. I used to drink with her some, but since I've stopped she thinks that I am such a loser, and that God is just a phase for me. I have no more personal friends at school. But you know what? I am not going to apologize for speaking the name of Jesus, I am not going to justify my faith to them, and I am not going to hide the light that God has put me into. If I have to sacrifice everything... I will. I will take it. If my friends have to become my enemies for me to be with my best friend Jesus, then that’s fine with me. I always knew that being a Christian is having enemies, but I never thought that my "friends" were going to be those enemies. It's all good, I'm just a loner now at school. I just wish that someone from Breakthru went to my school."

"These hands belong to Rachel Joy Scott and will someday touch millions of people's hearts."

"Faith brings peace. Faith brings joy."

"It's hard to be desperate, when you are dead."

"If you had to make a list of the top 5 things most important to you, what would you put? Here's mine 1. God 2. Family 3. friends 4. my future 5. myself."

"There is a God and I'm going to serve him for the rest of my life."

"I can see him. I know that God is real. I know it in my heart. You can only believe in what you know to be true. You know your own truth. I know mine. Everyone should be able to find that within themselves."

"Women are indebted today for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch today where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God."

"PETA has proven that there is a sexy way to suggest to people to rethink the fur. … As a former fur wearer, I must say that I have not really given fur any thought for a good seven years. I don't really think that fur is the mark of success anymore. As a decent person, with compassion, it just seems like the right thing to support. What I would have to say to people that currently wear fur, I’d softly suggest to keep your mind open and do your research."

"When you're an outsider or a misfit, if you play it smart, your motto should be, "I'll show 'em. I will show you.""

"Anxiety was a philosophical concept before it taken up by psychology and psychiatry. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard (1813-1855) argued that anxiety is part of human nature. Anxiety arises where possibility and actuality come into contact and the present touches the future. Anxiety is a product of having the freedom to make choices and act, and by doing so make a commitment to one’s identity, ways of being in the world, and standing in relation to other people. For Kierkegaard, anxiety can be an avenue to stand in relation to God. This is why he wrote, “Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate.” One can bracket out the God dimensions and still learn something valuable from Kierkegaard, namely that anxiety can cause inaction, which is, in its most basic sense, a loss of freedom. What is possible may never actualize and one may lose the present by tending to an imagined future. One becomes immobilized and unable to meet needs and realize goals and aspirations."

"One man stands as free men stand As if his soul might be Brave, unbroken; see his hand Nailed to an oaken tree."

"Wylie and Millay were standard in high school-women whom I really loved."

"Orchard of the strangest fruits Hanging from the skies; Brothers, yet insensate brutes Who fear each others’ eyes."

"It is not in the power of an organization which has insulted Elinor Wylie, to honour me."

"I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom’s breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death."

"The rain’s cold grains are silver-gray Sharp as golden sands, A bell is clanging, people sway Hanging by their hands."

"Under oak, ash and thorn My soul was born. Under thorn, oak and ash My body bent to the lash."

"When the world turns completely upside down You say we’ll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We’ll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You’ll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut’s dark gold color. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We’ll swim in milk and honey till we drown."

"The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot."

"When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird’s beak, We shall live well — we shall live very well."

"Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There’s something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There’s something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones."

"Individualism is one of the great foundations of Western culture. But unless society secures personal independence and basic security for the individual, it can lead to disaffection, anxiety, and chaos. For a long time now the United States has been turning toward its Wild West past, while the Nordic nations have been taking individualism in the logical direction of further progress, and into the future."

"[...] Markus Jäntti, a Finnish economist at the University of Helsinki, who with his colleagues looked at inherited disadvantage—in other words, how much worse your chances are for success if you’re born into a low-income family. They found that in the United States, 40 percent of men who were born into the lowest income bracket stayed in it. In the Nordic countries, that figure was only 25 percent. [...] America is no longer the land of opportunity, northern Europe is. This is the reality that led the British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband to make his surprising statement in 2012: “If you want the American dream, go to Finland.”"

"From the Nordic perspective, it’s not this Nordic approach that is unsustainable—it’s the American approach that’s eventually going to implode. For in the United States more than half of fast-food workers rely on some form of public assistance to get by, meaning that American taxpayers are actually subsidizing the fast-food industry in the United States, to the tune of billions of dollars per year. If we’re hunting for countries practicing socialism, the United States appears to be a pretty strong contender."

"America’s reign of optimism contributes to a culture in which negative feelings are often unwelcome. [...] As I pondered the question Americans often posed to me—Why aren’t Finns more optimistic, despite their supposedly great society?—I began to turn it around into a different question, a question that seemed to me the more relevant one: How have Finns managed to build such a great society, despite all their negativity? Perhaps the answer is that Finns have built a great society because of their pessimism, not in spite of it. The volume of outrage and complaints that pour out of Finns whenever they perceive an injustice in their society can be annoying—especially when that injustice might be considered minor in other countries. Nevertheless, perhaps this capacity for negative response is part of the secret of Finnish success. Finns are quick to demand real changes that improve their external circumstances."

"This approach creates fewer strains between family members, because those individuals don’t have to make the sort of extreme sacrifices that can cause them to lose their independence, which so often forces families in America to fall apart—or stops them from forming in the first place."

"For example, for all the gender equality in Nordic societies, Nordic women are still less likely to work as managers than are American women. So, is the answer for Nordic women to become American-style supermoms, “leaning in” more at the office while also doing full duty as parents?"

"All told, thanks to these various forms of freedom from the old-fashioned logistical dependence on one’s parents, children in Nordic countries have an easier time successfully managing the transition to adulthood. What a disaster, an American might think, that young people could end up on welfare straight out of school."

"Finally a special committee published its recommendation: Finland should create a unified public school system. Reactions were all over the map. Primary school teachers believed that every student could learn equally well, while university professors tended to be skeptical. Politicians were divided."

"Because of smart policies, Finland is able to spend less per student than do Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the United States on all levels, with much better outcomes. The good news for America, though, is that for precisely this reason, Finland is an encouraging example for any country that is facing diminished budgets. [...] One area in which Finns excel is cutting administrative costs. It turns out that Finns did not invent most of the education policies they are currently using. Americans did. Child-centered education, problem solving-based learning, educating people for democratic life—these are all ideas introduced by American thinkers. [...] It doesn’t seem, then, like much of a stretch to suggest that the United States could borrow smart ideas about education from Finland."

"What Lars Trägårdh came to understand during his years in the United States was that the overarching ambition of Nordic societies during the course of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, has not been to socialize the economy at all, as is often mistakenly assumed. Rather the goal has been to free the individual from all forms of dependency within the family and in civil society: the poor from charity, wives from husbands, adult children from parents, and elderly parents from their children. The express purpose of this freedom is to allow all those human relationships to be unencumbered by ulterior motives and needs, and thus to be entirely free, completely authentic, and driven purely by love."

"I can report was twice as acerbic in person than on camera as Addison Dewitt. He was just plain nasty to poor Marilyn Monroe, who was always quaking in her boots. He'd pat her on the rump and say, "You almost got through that two-line speech, my dear. Shall we try again?""

"When the stage musical came along, I was asked to play Margo [the Bette Davis role in the movie] to replace Betty Bacall, and I first thought it was gimmicky. But I can sing, or rather croak, and I wanted to do Broadway—and it turned out just fine. One matinee day Bette Davis phoned and said she was coming to check me out, and we got a chair placed just behind the curtain so she could watch without the audience watching her. After the curtain came down she said, "Baxter, you can still astonish me." And she left. Just like that. On another occasion, she was in Chicago to receive the real and I popped out to give it to her. Get it? Eve giving Margo the award she'd first won. She looked hesitant when she saw me and then roared with laughter. She got it, she really got it."

"I loved that one because Greg Peck usually was so stolid in his pictures. Billy made him relax more than usual. He was playing an outlaw and I was shacked up in this ghost town with my pa and the outlaws are trying to smoke us out. Well, there's one line where I remark about his body odor and Greg tried to get it removed, saying it might undermine his box office appeal among girls. And Billy just chuckled and kept on shooting."

"We've lost a remarkable actress and a significant star. I ... found her to be an extraordinary performer and a fine woman."

"Well, rushed over to apologize to me once when Barrymore cut loose with a barrage of foul language, but I didn't even know he was swearing. The way I was raised, I didn't even hear a four-letter word until I was eighteen. I mean that. Here's another example: I was autographing photos of me for fans once and my mother looked over my shoulder with a stricken look on her face and said, "What are you writing?" So I told her: "Good luck, always, Anne Baxter." Then she told me, "Your 'L' looks just like an 'F,' and that's a very dirty word!" But the truth is I'd never heard that word before and hadn't a clue what it meant."

"I wasn't pretty enough to be used for cutesy parts. At my very best, I was attractive. I was not a face, so I never got into that rut. I was also constantly dieting to get rid of my baby fat. I was having a hard time with that and think I probably had a mild case of bulimia. I became a foodaholic. I loved rhubarb pies. There used to be this little place on that made wonderful rhubarb pies. I'd buy one, drive my car onto a side road, eat the whole thing, and then spit it back into the box. I'd buy whole containers of ice cream and spit it into the disposal. It was disgusting!"

"Anne Baxter's death is a shattering shock to all of us who loved her and had the privilege of working with her."

"Adored him, but he was a lost soul. Kept saying, "They don't make films here like we do in France, n'est-ce pas?" [...] We filmed indoors on a studio stage with a recreated swamp. Jean could only clasp his arms and look horrified. He was limited in camera angles because of the transparency screens—a movement of inches and the screens would be exposed. And his English was learned from books. In conversation, he was terrible. One day he told a little girl extra to "Make some water." He meant get her dress damp because she'd just been pulled from the swamp. Her mother was horrified, thinking he'd asked her to tinkle—and slapped his face."

"I don't think much of most of the films I made, but being a movie star was something I liked very much."

"Darryl Zanuck thought all women were either broads or librarians. He thought I was a librarian. He thought I was smart."

"Few people remember good women. They don't forget bad girls."