If you’re really a gaucho [cowboy of S. American pampas], you can’t change, because wherever you go, you’ll go with your soul leading the way.
​Ricardo Güiraldes
Author of Xaimaca
Born February 13, 1886

You know what I worry about? I worry that kids today don't have enough time to just sit and daydream.
​Judy Blume
Author of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing 
Born February 12, 1938

I really don’t think our school system is an evil borg force. It’s sort of like the government. It’s not even efficient enough to be a borg of total evil,  even if it wanted to be.
​Sandra Tsing Loh
Author of The Madwoman and the Roomba: My Year of Domestic Mayhem
Born February 11, 1962

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.
Annie Bethel Spencer, Poet
​Born February 6, 1882

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. 
​William S. Burroughs
Author of Queer 
​Born February 5, 1914

The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities—is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
Betty Friedan
Author of The Feminine Mystique 
Born February 4, 1921

It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.
​Shirley Hazzard
Author of The Great Fire
Born January 30, 1931

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
​Anton Chekhov,  Playwright
Author of The Cherry Orchard
Born January 29, 1860

As I stood in the room looking at it for the last time, I felt again the cold metal of the handcuffs on my wrists and remembered the physical suffering and mental anguish I had endured while fighting with all the will power and intellect God had given me for that rare and elusive thing in a Communist country called justice.
Nien Cheng
Author of Life and Death in Shanghai
​Born January 28, 1915

A woman with opinions had better develop a thick skin and a loud voice.
​Anya Seton 
Author of The Winthrop Woman
Born January 23, 1904

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.
August Strindberg, Playwright
Author of The Dance of Death
Born January 22, 1849

I really do believe some people are naturally novelists and some people are short story writers. For me, when I was in middle school or high school,  I started with novels.
​M. K. Hobson
Author of The Native Star
Born January 21, 1969

Inspiration comes from the world around me. I'm an inveterate eavesdropper.
​Jenny Nimmo
Author of Midnight for Charlie Bone
Born January 15, 1944

Aspiring writers should read the entire canon of literature that precedes them, back to the Greeks, up to the current issue of The Paris Review.
​William Kennedy
Author of Ironweed
Born January 15, 1928

I see the author as the person who has written; the writer, the one involved in the process of writing. And they're not necessarily friends. The writer is the one I want to reinforce; the author would just feed on the reviews—so I'm in favour of starving him.
​Edward St. Aubyn
Author of The Patrick Melrose Novels
Born January 14, 1960

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, the “division” of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.
​Simone de Beauvoir
Author of The Second Sex
Born January 9, 1908

The poetry of Walt Whitman. I can return again and again to these magnificent poems and still get pleasure from reading them.
​Robert Littell
Author of Legends
Born January 8, 1935

Women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
​Zora Neale Hurston
Author of Mules and Men
Born January 7, 1891

It's incumbent on good public servants to maintain their voices and originality of thinking.
​Ronan Farrow
American Journalist
Born December 19, 1987

Dorothy L. Sayers is absolutely my favorite. The reason she stands above Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham is because she was so subtly aware of the lot and trials of women of her decade.
​Lucy Worsley
Author of A Very British Murder: The Story of a National Obsession
​Born December 18, 1973

For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste. If you much like a new book, you must call it literature even though you find no other soul to agree with you, and if you dislike a book you must declare that it is not literature though a million voices should shout you that you are wrong. The ultimate decision will be made by Time.
​Ford Madox Ford
​Author of The Good Soldier
Born December 17, 1873 

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
​Gustave Flaubert
Author of Sentimental Education
Born December 12, 1821

One of the reasons I'm reluctant to start a novel is it's such an obsessive activity. You get in there, you don't know anything else while you're in there. And that's quite a sacrifice to make, especially for us old guys where time is kind of short. You don't want to disappear for a year; you want to be outdoors.
​Thomas McGuane
Author of Gallatin Canyon
Born December 11, 1939

The way I live now is that I only write, which means that I'm very poor but very happy. Everything in my life is the way I want it to be. 
Helen Oyeyemi
Author of Peaces
Born December 10, 1984

Be not afraid of discomfort. If you can't put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable, then you will never grow. You will never change. You'll never learn.
​Jason Reynolds
Author of Long Way Down
Born December 6, 1983