Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
​H. G. Wells
Author of ​The Time Machine
​Born September 21, 1866

I started to respect older actors when I was young and then contemporary actors later on. Then I learned respect for comedy. When I was first doing theatre, I thought of it as just a means to become Sarah Bernhardt or someone like that. But acting with young people has been a great learning experience.
​Anne Meara,  Actor and Comedian
Starred in TV's The King of Queens
Born September 20, 1929

No hardy perennial has the enduring quality of hope. Cut it to the roots, stamp it underfoot, let frost and fire work their will, and still some valiant shoot will push, to grow again on such scanty fare as it can find. Only time and the cruel quicklime of fact can destroy that stubborn urgency.
​Rachel Field
Author of Hitty: Her First Hundred Years
​Born September 19, 1894

I can't remember how many times I advised students to stop writing the sunny hours and write from where it hurts: No one wants to read polite. It puts them to sleep. Nice writing isn't enough. It isn't enough to have smooth and pretty language.
​Anne Bernays
Author of The Man on the Third Floor
​Born September 14, 1930

When people start hurling insults at you, you know their minds are closed and there's no point in debating. You disengage yourself as quickly as possible from the situation.
​Judith Martin [Miss Manners]
Author of Miss Manners Minds Your Business
Born September 13, 1938

From a timid shy girl I had become a woman of resolute character, who could no longer be frightened by the struggle with troubles.
​Anna Dostoyevskaya, Spouse of F. Dostoevksy
Author of Dostoevsky: Reminiscences
​Born September 12, 1846

My main piece of advice would be don't worry about being published—just write a really good book, but also don't be afraid to write a bad book. Give yourself permission to fail, and don't be afraid.
​David Levithan
Author of ​Two Boys Kissing
​Born September 7, 1972

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.
​Jennifer Egan
Author of ​The Candy House
​Born September 6, 1962

Any authoritarian regime, having suppressed normal political conditions, will find itself in need of internal and external enemies, someone to blame for peoples' misfortunes.
​Yevgenia Albats, Journalist
Author of Bureaucrats and Russian Transition: Politics of Accommodation
Born September 5, 1958

If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is then no longer a thief.
​William Saroyan, Playwright
Author of ​The Human Comedy
​Born August 31, 1908

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. 
​Molly Ivins
Author of ​Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America
​Born August 30, 1944

Why aren't these fantasy novels on display somewhere in my house, where there are a thousand-plus other books stacked across a dozen bookshelves? Because bookshelves do more than just hold up our books. They speak to how we see ourselves, and more obviously how we want others to see us. This is a part of my makeup I don't always show.
​Matt Bell
Author of ​Appleseed: A Novel
Born August 29, 1980

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.
​Stephen Fry
Author of Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold
Born August 24, 1957

We reinvent ourselves to solve a client’s problem. It’s more than just tweaking. It’s rethinking what your audience wants and needs. Isn’t that what great actors constantly do?
​Merrie Spaeth, Public Relations &
​    Communications
​Born August 23, 1948

I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money.
​Dorothy Parker—Poet, Writer, Critic, Satirist
Author of "Big Blonde," Short Story
​Born August 22, 1893

I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then . . . it's sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that's fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.
​Jonathan Franzen
Author of ​Crossroads
​Born August 17, 1959

Guns are part of the Constitution, and no one is willing to have that tough conversation with Congress and the Senate and the president to say maybe that's got to change. People talk about it—but I mean actual change.
George Stroumboulopoulos,
Canadian Media Personality
Host of The Hour,
​Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
​Born August 16, 1972

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
​Linda Ellerbee, Journalist
Author of Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table
​Born August 15, 1944

A poem needs to be orderly enough to hold our attention, to make us feel that we are being guided through the exhibition, and needs to leave room for slippage and surprise, for those productive disruptions that characterize the real.
​Mark Doty,  Poet
Author: What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life
​Born August 10, 1953

Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer,  I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.
​Barbara Delinsky
Author of ​A Week at the Shore
​Born August 9, 1945

It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used but not owned. We are tenants, not possessors, lovers and not masters.
​Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Author of ​The Yearling
​Born August 8, 1896

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.
​Amy Clampitt, Poet
Author of What the Light Was Like
​Born June 15, 1920

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.
​Jerzy Kosinski
Author of ​The Painted Bird
​Born June 14, 1933

How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts—I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if a stranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious—insolent and whimsical I must appear!—one moment flighty and half mad—the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.
​Fanny Burney
Author of Camilla
Born June 13, 1752