It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life. 
​Christopher Lasch
Author of The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
Born June 1, 1932

Whether you are inspired or not, the only way to unlock your creativity,  is to start writing.
​Jane Green
Author of ​Sister Stardust
​Born May 31, 1968

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.
​Colm Tóibín
Author of The Magician
Born May 30, 1955 

Middle age is when your old classmates are so grey and wrinkled and bald they don’t recognize you.
​Bennett Cerf
Author of ​Bennett Cerf's Book of Laughs
​Born May 25, 1898

I make enemies deliberately. They are the sauce piquante to my dish of life.
​Elsa Maxwell
Author of How to Do It or the Lively Art of Entertaining
​Born May 24, 1883

In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child’s need for quietness is the same today as it has always been—it may even be greater—for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.
​Margaret Wise Brown
Author of ​The Runaway Bunny
​Born May 23, 1910

There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.
​Diane Duane
Author of ​Deep Wizardry
​Born May 18, 1952

The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one.
​Robert Surtees
Author of ​The Horseman's Manual
Born May 17, 1803

As a writer, I have this compulsion to take characters who appear formidable and bombard them with adversity until they crumble. What's interesting is watching them rise again, and seeing how they've changed and grown, if indeed they have.
​Jean Hanff Korelitz
Author of ​The Latecomer
​Born May 16, 1961

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.
​Ariel Durant
Author of ​The Lessons of History
Born May 10, 1898

Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided.
​Sophie Scholl, anti-Nazi activist
Subject of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005 film)
​Born May 9, 1921

Baking may be regarded as a science, but it's the chemistry between the ingredients and the cook that gives desserts life. Baking is done out of love, to share with family and friends, to see them smile.
​Anna Olson
Author of ​Set for the Holidays
​Born May 4, 1968

Religion doesn’t make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.
Reza Aslan
Author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Born May 2, 1972

Joy does not kill any more than sorrow. 
Margaret Hill McCarter
Author of A Master’s Degree
Born May 2, 1860

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.
​Cecil Day-Lewis,  Poet and Novelist
Author of ​A Hope for Poetry
Born April 27, 1904

The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it,  America would be grim indeed.
​Anita Loos
Author of ​Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
​Born April 26, 1893

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
​Edward R. Murrow
Broadcast Journalist 
​Born April 25, 1908

There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life.
​Aubrey de Grey
Author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging
​Born April 20, 1963

Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can. 
Richard Hughes
Author of A High Wind in Jamaica 
Born April 19, 1900 

As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.
​Susan Faludi
Author of Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man
​Born April 18, 1959

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever rally lost. 
​Eudora Welty
Author of One Writer’s Beginnings 
Born April 13, 1909

To pronounce something clever and honest is not such a big deal, lots of them have been said and written. For a statement of truth to be effective and for it to make people wiser, it has to be filtered through the soul of a highest quality, the soul of an artist.
​Aleksandr Ostrovsky, Playwright
Author of ​Without a Dowry
​Born April 12, 1823

Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and stretching the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.
​Margaret of Valois-Angoulême, Poet
Author of Heptaméron
Born April 11, 1492

The root cause of xenophobia in Russia is not religious differences between Muslims and Christians. Nor is it crime. The root cause is the terrible education that children acquire on the street,  at school,  and at home.
​Margarita Simonyan
Russian Journalist
​Born April 6, 1980

I'm fascinated by the journey that an intelligent and an ambitious woman makes in the professional world in contrast to the journey that a man of similar ambition, of similar intelligence makes. What sort of concessions does a woman have to make? Does she have to work twenty percent harder than a man?
​Charles Cumming
Author of ​A Colder War: A Novel
Born April 5, 1971