The theme of Death is to Poetry what Mistaken Identity is to Drama.
​Dannie Abse
​Author of The Presence
Born September 22, 1923

Although I’m a retired teenager, I remember what it was like to be one. I could have sworn I was riding an emotional roller coaster most of the time. Looking back, I’m actually amazed that I survived.
​Sean Covey
Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens
Born September 17, 1964

I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward—well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.
​Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Author of Finding Your Roots
Born September 16, 1950

There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger.
​Agatha Christie
Author of Murder on the Orient Express
Born September 15, 1890

I took this “how to build computers” course basically because I'm sick and tired of getting ripped off by cheesy computer companies. Software baffles me. I like hardware. I used to change my own oil, and now I want to build my own computer so I can have what I want. 
​Pat Cadigan
Author of Tea from an Empty Cup
Born September 10, 1953

Death by starvation is slow.
​Mary Hunter Austin
Author of The Land of Journeys' Ending
Born September 9, 1868

You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story. 
​Ann Beattie
Author of Mrs. Nixon
Born September 8, 1947

Our parents provided us with the essentials, then got on with their own lives. Which makes me realise that my parents were brilliant, not for what they did, but more for what they didn't do.
​Rachel Johnson
Author of Rake's Progress: My Political Midlife Crisis
Born September 3, 1965

The proper drinking of Scotch whisky is more than indulgence: it is a toast to civilization, a tribute to the continuity of culture, a manifesto of man's determination to use the resources of nature to refresh mind and body and enjoy to the full the senses with which he has been endowed.
​David Daiches
Author of Scotch Whisky: Its Past and Present
Born September 2, 1912

Anybody against women, against the ERA, should never be voted into office again.
​Liz Carpenter
Author of Unplanned Parenthood
Born September 1, 1920

Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them.
​George Packer
Author of Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
Born August 13, 1960

What is most important to me is that my narrator's voice is believable, and that, though it is clearly an absolute fiction, it has the emotional resonance of memoir.
​Chris Bohjalian
Author of The Flight Attendant
Born August 12,1962

One thing the gay rights movement taught the world is the importance of being visible.
Charles M. Blow
Author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Born August 11,1970

I guess I'm attracted and repelled by isolation. It scares me. And it's why I tend to write about older characters, too, because for them the stakes are somewhat higher.
​Conor McPherson
​Screenwriter for  film, I Went Down
Born August 6, 1971

I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
​Haim Ginott
Author of Teacher and Child
Born August 5, 1922

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.
​Knut Hamsun
Author of Growth of the Soil
Born August 4, 1859

Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands.
​Giorgio Vasari
Author of Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
Born July 30, 1511

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they think about memes is they try to extend on the analogy with genes. That's not how it works. It works by realizing the concept of a replicator.
​Susan Blackmore
Author of The Meme Machine
Born July 29,1951

          I am soft sift
     In an hourglass—at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift
     And it crowds and it combs to the
          fall . . . .
​Gerard Manley Hopkins
Author of The Windhover
Born July 28, 1844

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
​Raymond Chandler
Author of The Big Sleep
Born July 23, 1888

Until we are all free, we are none of us free.
​​​​Emma Lazarus, Poet
Author of The New Colossus
Born July 22, 1849

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.
​​Hart Crane, Poet
Author of The Bridge
Born July 21, 1899

I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living.
​Reinaldo Arenas,  Author of Before Night Falls
Born July 16, 1943

I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.
​Richard Russo, Author of Everybody's Fool
Born July 15, 1949

​Literature is the supreme means by which you renew your sensuous and emotional life and learn a new awareness.
​Frank Raymond Leavis,
Author of D. H. Lawrence Novelist
Born July 14, 1895