The idea that men [sic] are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.
​David Riesman
​Author of The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character
​Born September 22, 1909

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.
​Janet Burroway
Author of Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition: A Guide to Narrative Craft
​Born September 21, 1936

Mysteries always have the potential for interesting connections between the elements. I'm also most interested in the relationship between the characters. As in Masterpiece, I'm trying to create characters who not only are solving a mystery but are solving the riddle of their own personal relationships.
​Elise Broach
Author of ​The Miniature World of Marvin and James
​Born September 20, 1963

It's much easier to identify and fix problems in language and timing when you hear the words being read. 
​Jesse Kellerman
Author of The Golem of Paris
​Born September 1, 1978

You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.
​Eldridge Cleaver
Author of ​Soul on Ice
​Born August 31, 1935

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
​Mary Shelley
Author of ​The Last Man
​Born August 30, 1797

          IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER
 
I’d like to make more mistakes next time.
I’d relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier
than I have been this trip. I would take fewer
things seriously. I would take more chances. I
would climb more mountains and swim more
rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but
I’d have fewer imaginary ones.
 
You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly
and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh,
I’ve had my moments, and if I had it to do over
again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to
have nothing else. Just moments, one after
another, instead of living so many years ahead
of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who
never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a
hot water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute.
If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter
than I have.
 
If I had my life to live over, I would start
barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way
later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I
would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick
more daisies.
 
Nadine Stair—Lived to be 85
 
Relax

If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television—can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.
​Howard Zinn
Author of ​A People's History of the United States
​Born August 24, 1926

I have no college education; I taught myself how to write. If you want it badly enough, you can have it. You can walk into any room and convince the person that you know what you're doing.
​Erin Foster
​Produced and Starred in Barely Famous TV Series
​Born August 23, 1982

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.
​Nicole Krauss
Author of ​To Be a Man: Stories
​Born August 18, 1974

I have always written only for myself—to clarify things, to clarify things with myself, to understand in an inner way what is actually happening.
​Herta Müller
Author of ​The Hunger Angel
​Born August 17, 1953

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.
​Ted Hughes
Author of ​The Iron Man
​Born August 16, 1930 

I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.
​Alex Haley
Author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family
​Born August 11, 1921

I think it's very uncomfortable for people to talk to children about war, and so they don't because it's easier not to. But then you have young people at eighteen who are enlisting in the army, and they really don't have the slightest idea what they're getting into.
​Suzanne Collins
Author of ​The Hunger Games
​Born August 10, 1962

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can’t quite name.
—from "The Old Fools"
​Philip Larkin
Author of ​A Girl in Winter
​Born August 9, 1922

Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training, and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards, as in what's far out and what's reality. And they have no dedication to truth.
​Helen Thomas
Author of ​Listen Up, Mr. President
​Born August 4, 1920

So imagine a fire going—wood snapping the way it does when it’s a little green—the wind rattling the windows behind the curtains—and one of those Chopin melodies that feel like sorrow and ecstasy all mixed together pouring from the keys—and you have my idea of happiness. Or just reading, reading and lamplight, the sound of pages turning. And so you dare to be happy. You do that thing. You dare.
​Steven Millhauser
Author of ​Voices in the Night: Stories
​Born August 3, 1943

I have likened writing a novel to going on a journey, with some notion of the destination I will arrive at, but not the whole picture—which emerges gradually as a series of revelations, as the journey goes along.
​Rose Tremain
Author of ​Islands of Mercy
​Born August 2, 1943

Success is like some horrible disaster
Worse than your house burning.
​Malcolm Lowry
Author of ​Under the Volcano
Born July 28, 1909

This the unspoken contract of a wife and her works. In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin—consideration for their feelings. And it usually turns out this is an enormous unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged.
​Elizabeth Hardwick
Author of Sleepless Nights
​Born July 27, 1916

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.
​Aldous Huxley
Author of Brave New World
​Born July 26, 1894

I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall in a few Victorian parlours.
​Sarah Waters
Author of The Little Stranger
​Born July 21, 1966

Even if what you're working on doesn't go anywhere, it will help you with the next thing you're doing. Make yourself available for something to happen. Give it a shot.
​Cormac McCarthy
Author of No Country for Old Men
Born July 20, 1933

The historical background is one of the easier aspects of writing a novel. Far more difficult is dreaming up the smaller, character-based scenes, scenes that rise entirely from one's own imagination.
​Ethan Canin
Author of The Palace Thief
Born July 19, 1960

When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have.
Owen Wister 
Author of The Virginian
Born July 14, 1860