Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
Thomas Wolfe
Author of You Can't Go Home Again
Born October 3, 1900

If you want to rip the heart out of a democracy, you go after the facts. That's what modern authoritarians do. You lie. All the time. Then, you say it's your opponents and the journalists who lie.
​Maria Ressa,  American & Filipino Journalist
Author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator
Born October 2, 1963

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
​Jimmy Carter
Author of Why Not the Best?
​Born October 1, 1924

I like working with memory. Not the truth of memory, but how characters remember an event, either truthfully or not. Something happened to us in the past, and we think we know how it happened, but over twenty years it completely changed.
Scott Heim
Author of ​Mysterious Skin
Born September 26, 1966

My work as a screenwriter has influenced my fiction. Writing screenplays forces you to consider many elements regarding story structure and other narrative devices that can be used to enhance the infinitely more complex demands of a novel.
​Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Spanish author of La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind)
Born September 25, 1964

The single most impressive fact about the attempt by American women to obtain the right to vote is how long it took.
​Alice Rossi
Author of Of Human Bonding: Parent-Child Relations across the Life Course
Born September 24, 1922

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.
​Tanith Lee
Author of Night's Master
Born September 18, 1947

My work is about giving voice to the unheard, and reiterating the voice of the heard in such a way that you question, or re-examine, what is the truth.
​Anna Deavere Smith, Screenwriter
Author of The American President
Born September 18, 1950

Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that’s in your audience’s eye.
​Ken Kesey
Author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Born September 17, 1935

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.
​Michael Ondaatje
Author of Divisadero
Born September 12, 1943

Some studies show that women can be better money managers than men because they tend to be more conservative and do their homework. Men tend to take more risks without the research.
​Maria Bartiromo, Journalist
Born September 11, 1967

The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too.
Mary Oliver, Poet
Author of Dog Songs
Born September 10, 1935

A WRITER'S WIT
Depending on where I am in the process, sometimes I have a page count and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have an hour count; sometimes I’m just happy to string a few words together. I do keep pretty rigorous hours, because otherwise you never get anything done.
​Alice Sebold
Author of The Lovely Bones
Born September 6, 1963

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
​John Cage, Composer and Music Theorist
"Concert for Piano and Orchestra"
Born September 5, 1912

If we had been allowed to participate in the vital processes of America’s national growth, what would have been the textures of our lives, the pattern of our traditions, the routine of our customs, the state of our arts, the code of our laws, the function of our government! . . . We black folk say that America would have been stronger and greater.
​Richard Wright
Author of Native Son
Born September 4, 1908

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness. 
​Sarah Orne Jewett
Author of  The Country of the Pointed Firs, 15
Born September 3, 1849

Sometimes, a flame can be utterly extinguished. Sometimes, a flame can shrink and waver, but sometimes a flame refuses to go out. It flares up from the faintest ember to illuminate the darkness, to burn in spite of overwhelming odds.
​Karen Hesse
Author of Out of the Dust
Born August 29, 1952

If you understand hallucination and illusion, you don't blindly follow any leader. You must know if the person is sane or insane, over the abyss.
​Marguerite Young
Author of Angel in the Forest
​Born August 28, 1908
​[Some sources say Aug. 26.]

On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dark—times neither day nor night—the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they cast a mysterious shadow of blue, and it’s that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself. 
William Least Heat-Moon
​Author of Blue Highways
Born August 27, 1939

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
​Annie Proulx
Author of Barkskins
​Born August 22, 1935

A good book ought to bring out lots of different responses from those that read it—none of them pre-planned, and all of them very personal. Whatever they take away from the reading of the book is valuable.
Sharon M. Draper
Author of Out of My Heart
Born August 21, 1948

Growing up with three brothers and three sisters, I was the storyteller of the family . . . what my mother called “The Liar.” 
​James Rollins
Author of Map of Bones
Born August 20, 1961

The law is not a “light” for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely.
​Robert Bolt, Playwright
Author of A Man for All Seasons
Born August 15, 1924

I’ve always believed that there are funny people everywhere, but they’re just not comedians. In fact, some of my best comedic inspirations were not professional entertainers.
​Steve Martin, Comedian
Author of Born Standing Up
Born August 14, 1945

I don’t know how others reconcile what happened before with what happens now. For me, the past is a cool, dark pond in which I will always stand partially submerged. That’s just the way it is.
​Kate Walbert
Author of A Short History of Women
Born August 13, 1961