I don't shy from controversy. I'm telling stories, and I'll tell whatever story seems like it wants to be told.
​Lauren Myracle
Author of ​Sticks and Stones
Born May 15, 1969

I often meet frustrated young writers who say they've only got so far and just can't finish a book. Even if you don't happen to use what you've worked on that day, it has taught you something and you'll be amazed when you might come back to it and use it again.
Eoin Colfer
Author of ​Artemis Fowl
Born May 14, 1965

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.
Madeleine Albright
Author of Fascism: A Warning
Born May 13, 1937

There’s only one thing worse than the man who will argue over anything,  and that’s the man who will argue over nothing.
Edward Gibbon
Author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Born May 8, 1737

The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn’t that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.
​Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Author of ​A Lovesong for India
​Born May 7, 1927

Courses in the humanities, in particular, often seem impractical, but they are vital, because they stretch your imagination and challenge your mind to become more responsive, more critical, bigger.
​Martha C. Nussbaum
Author of Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility 
Born May 6, 1947

It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go.
​Lorene Scafaria,  Screenwriter
Author of Under the Boardwalk
Born May 1, 1978

I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay. 
John Boyne
Author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Born May 30, 1971

Cats have it all—admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it.
Rod McKuen, Songwriter and Poet
Author of ​In Someone's Shadow
Born April 29, 1938

I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I’ve written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part.
​Shirley MacLaine
Author of ​Out on a Limb
​Born April 24, 1934

I found out about reviews early on. They’re mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That’s probably why I’m less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason.
​Barry Hannah
Author of High Lonesome
Born April 23, 1942 

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.
​Ellen Glasgow
Author of In This Our Life
Born April 22, 1873

Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.
​Isak Dinesen
Author of ​Out of Africa 
Born April 17, 1885

The young need old men. They need men who are not ashamed of age, not pathetic imitations of themselves . . . . Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.
Peter Ustinov, Screenwriter
Author of Romanoff and Juliet
Born April 16, 1921

There is a hidden fear that somehow, if they are only given a chance, women will suddenly do as they have been done by.
​Eva Figes
Author of Tales of Innocence  and Experience 
Born April 15, 1932

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
​Anne Lamott
Author of Somehow: Thoughts on Love
Born April 10, 1954

Genius is the capacity to retrieve childhood at will.
​Charles Baudelaire, Poet
Author of Invitation to a Voyage
Born April 9, 1821

All wars are crusades, or we're made to feel they are. That's just what's so wicked about them. We're made to feel—not think—and people can't think when they feel.
Margaret Ayer Barnes
Author of Years of Grace
Born April 8, 1886

I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.
Jane Goodall
Author of Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe
Born April 3, 1934

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.
​Hans Christian Andersen
Author of The Snow Queen
Born April 2, 1805

There is power in naming racism for what it is, in shining a bright light on it, brighter than any torch or flashlight. A thing as simple as naming it allows us to root it out of the darkness and hushed conversation where it likes to breed like roaches. It makes us acknowledge it. Confront it.
​Jesmyn Ward
Author of Let Us Descend
Born April 1, 1977

I guess I think that sex and desire and humiliation are central to my experience of consciousness—to my experience of humanness—and I wanted to explore the ways that they circle around and approach and fail to add up to love, or the ways that those three terms—sex, desire, love—can in some lights seem synonymous and in others like elements entirely alien to one another.
Garth Greenwell
Author of Cleanness
Born March 19, 1978

Be bullied, be outraged, be killed, but do not kill.
Wilfred Owen, Poet
Author of "Arms of the Boy"
Born March 18, 1893

The Indian knows his village and feels for his village as no white man for his country, his town, or even for his own bit of land. His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as long as the sun rises and the moon sets. The myths are the village, and the winds and rains. The river is the village, and . . . the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die.
​Margaret Craven
Author of I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Born March 13, 1901

Because I grew up with this naive expectation of people doing right, I get shocked by every little violation. 
​Dave Eggers
Author of The Eyes and the Impossible
Born March 12, 1970