I think I'm part of a generation of crime writers all of whom woke up independently and recoiled with horror at the fact that we'd chosen this very conservative genre.
​Laura Lippman
Author of Lady in the Lake
Born January 31, 1959

Reading honest literature makes you love the world. Knowledge and understanding are love. Reading educates our feelings and enhances our sympathy. When you read for understanding, you are fundamentally changed. You are a different person at the end of the story or the novel than you were when it began.
​John Dufresne
Author of Johnny Too Bad
Born January 30, 1948

A WRITER'S WIT:
I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day, which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. I now close my military career and just fade away.
Douglas MacArthur
USA Army General, WWII
Born January 26, 1880

The problem isn't that conservatives are wrong about the efficiency of markets or the creativity of enterprise. It's that they have made false idols of both, usually without acknowledging that markets work best when well regulated, that private enterprise cannot meet every human need, that government has always played a critical role in our economy, and that the profit motive can be socially and environmentally destructive as well as dynamic.
​Joe Conason
Author of The Longest Con
Born January 25, 1954

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
​Edith Wharton
Author of Roman Fever
Born January 24, 1862 

In 2001, I moved from Philly to Atlanta, where I lived for six years. I had never lived anywhere but Philly, and you can imagine the culture shock; the Civil War seeps into daily life and conversation down South in a way it never does up North.
Karen Abbott
Author of Where You End: A Novel
Born January 23, 1973

Possible basis for my weltanschauung. That the childishness is never lost, but adulthood put like a veneer over it. We think inside like children, react, and have their desires. The outside manners are an absurd puff of conceit.
[Diaries and Notebooks 5/19/41]
​Patricia Highsmith
Author of Edith's Diary
Born January 19, 1921 

Bores can be divided into two classes; those who have their own particular subject, and those who do not need a subject.
​A. A. Milne
Author of Now We Are Six
​Born January 18, 1882

When television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air . . . and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
​Newton Minow
Former Chair of FCC
​Born January 17, 1926

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in kingdom of the sick.
​Susan Sontag
Author of Regarding the Pain of Others
Born January 16, 1933

A WRITER'S WIT
Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.
​​Haruki Murakami
Author of Killing Commendation
Born January 12, 1949

People ask me why I write strong women, and I say, “Well, I don't like stupid ones.” Who would want to read about weak and whiny women? Are they people who assume women are weak and whiny? If so, why do they think that?
​Diana Gabaldon
Author of Outlander
Born January 11, 1952

The reason why Hollywood cranks out so many sequels and adaptations is because the audience is so overwhelmed with choices, the only way to get them in the theater is to give them something familiar. 
Jason "David Wong" Pargin
Author of John Dies in the End
Born January 10, 1975

I always tell my students, about the biggest baddest things in life you must try to write small and light, save the big writing for the unexpected tiny thing that always makes or breaks a story.
​Pam Houston
Author of Deep Creek
​Born January 9, 1962

A WRITER'S WIT      
I was that kid with the glasses and the hungry expression who haunted every library book sale and used bookstore in town: the one who always has a book in one hand and is reaching for the next book with the other. There's one in every town. 
​Seanan McGuire
Author of ​Middlegame
​Born January 5, 1978

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you,  you will not fear the critics outside you.
​Natalie Goldberg
Author of ​Writing Down the Bones
Born January 4, 1948

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend's folly.
​J. R. R. Tolkien
Author of ​The Lord of the Rings
​Born January 3, 1892

Many critics speak about coming-of-age love, about initiation, about young libido, and so forth. I've never seen it only this way. We continue to examine things ever so minutely, we interpret obsessively. We may be less bold at forty than we were at seventeen, but we're familiar with the road map; we know the bumps in the road; we recognize the sudden turns, the one-way streets, and the dead ends. And we are hurt just the same as when we were teenagers.
​André Aciman
Author of Call Me By Your Name
Born January 2, 1951