If you make a living, if you earn your own money, you're free—however free one can be on this planet.
​Theodore H. White
Author of The Making of the President Series
Born May 6, 1915

I know we will create a society where there are no rich or poor, no people without work or beauty in their lives, where money itself will disappear, where we shall all be brothers and sisters, where every one will have enough.
​Sylvia Pankhurst
Author of The Suffragette
Born May 5, 1882

Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.
​David Gutterson
Author of Snow Falling on Cedars
Born May 4, 1956

I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends.
​Ian Rankin
Author of In a House of Lies
Born April 28, 1960

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.
​Mary Wollstonecraft
Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Born April 27, 1759

You can get through very serious and sometimes horrible and sometimes embarrassing and very awkward situations with humor. It gives us a way out.
​Janet Evanovich
Author of Fortune and Glory: Tantalizing Twenty-Seven
Born April 22, 1943

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
​Charlotte Brontë
Author of Jane Eyre
Born April 21, 1816

Writing a short story is like painting a picture on the head of a pin. And just getting everything to fit is . . . sometimes seems impossible.
​Rebecca Makkai
Author of The Great Believers
Born April 20, 1978

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
​Corrie ten Boom
Author of The Hiding Place
Born April 15, 1892

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
​Arnold Toynbee
Author of Change and Habit
Born April 14, 1889

Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.
​Eudora Welty
Author of One Writer's Beginnings
Born April 13, 1909

I kept a journal when I was a teenager, so I definitely look back on those to see how I dealt with friends and cliques and getting picked on, or boyfriend breakups. 
Sara Shepard
Author of Pretty Little Liars
Born April 8, 1977

The greatest compliment a writer can be given is that a story and character hold a reader spellbound. I'm caught up in the story writing and I miss a good deal of sleep thinking about it and working out the plot points. 
Iris Johansen
Author of The Killing Game
Born April 7, 1938

. . . men do not seek the truth. It is truth that pursues men who run away and will not look around.
​Lincoln Steffens
Author of The Shame of the Cities
Born April 6, 1866

A lot of girls who turn into something remarkable start off as irrepressible, confident and a handful.
​Francine Prose
Author of What to Read and Why
Born April 1, 1947

Theatre's great. It's such an act of faith. It's a wonderful art form where you suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. It's a lovely art form because the actors and the audience are alive and in the room at the same time together. That's why I love the theatre.
​Israel Horovitz
Author of Park Your Car in Harvard Yard
Born March 31, 1939

I can't picture going to a beach, or anywhere on vacation, without a couple of books as companions.
Rosecrans Baldwin
Author of Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles
Born March 30, 1977

If someone called me a lesbian—in those days all single feminists were assumed to be lesbians—I learned to say, “Thank you.” It disclosed nothing, confused the accuser, conveyed solidarity with women who were lesbians, and made the audience laugh.
​Gloria Steinem
Author of Makers: Women Who Make America
Born March 25, 1934

If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out.
​Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Author of A Coney Island of the Mind
Born March 24, 1919

​Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
Erich Fromm
Author of The Art of Loving
Born March 23, 1900

I never understood people who don't have bookshelves.
​George Plimpton
Author of Paper Lion
Born March 18, 1927

Too much thought is bad for the soul, for art, and for crime. It is also a sign of middle age.
​Patrick Hamilton
Author of The Midnight Bell
Born March 17, 1904

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work—but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.
​Alice Hoffman
Author of The World We Knew
Born March 16, 1952

We're comfortable with women in certain roles but not comfortable with women expressing anger or fully accepting their power. The most daring question a woman can ask is, “What do I want?”
​Libba Bray
Author of Lair of Dreams
Born March 11, 1964

A man has only one escape from his old self: to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes.
​Clare Boothe Luce
Author of The Women (1936 play)
Born March 10, 1903