There's already a marriage clock, a career clock, a biological clock. Sometimes being a woman feels like standing in the lobby of a hotel, looking at the dials depicting every time zone in the world behind the front desk - except they all apply to you, and all at once.
​Sloane Crosley
Author of Sad Stuff on the Street
Born August 3, 1978

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.
​Chang-Rae Lee
Author of My Year Abroad
Born July 29, 1965

Muzzle a dog and he will bark out of the other end.
​Malcolm Lowry
Author of Under the Volcano
Born July 28, 1909

The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
​Elizabeth Hardwick
Author of ​Sleepless Nights
Born July 27, 1916

Hollywood is just too marvelous. One feels the footprints of all the immortals are here, but has a terrible feeling that they are in sand and won't last when civilization comes this way.
​James Whale
Director of Frankenstein (1931 film) 
Born July 22, 1889

The bottom of the sea is cruel.
​Hart Crane
Author of The Bridge
Born July 21, 1899
[Because Hart Crane apparently committed suicide by jumping from a ship in 1932, his statement rings with a certain irony. RJ]

I like work/life separation, not work/life balance. What I mean by that is, if I'm on, I want to be on and maximally productive. If I'm off, I don't want to think about work. When people strive for work/life balance, they end up blending them. That's how you end up checking email all day Saturday.
​Tim Ferriss
Author of Tribe of Mentors
Born July 20, 1977

Philosophy . . . means looking at things which one takes for granted and suddenly seeing that they are very odd indeed.
​Iris Murdoch
Author of The Sea, the Sea
Born July 15, 1919

The biographical novel is a true and documented story of one human being's journey across the face of the years, transmuted from the raw material of life into the delight and purity of an authentic art form.
​Irving Stone
Author of The Agony and the Ecstasy
Born July 14, 1903

It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.
​Jane Hamilton
Author of A Map of the World
Born July 13, 1957

Ideas are only lethal if you suppress and don't discuss them. Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid. Banning books shows you don't trust your kids to think and you don't trust yourself to be able to talk to them.
​Anna Quindlen
Author of One True Thing
Born July 8, 1953

In itself it is nothing. Nothing but a book: parchment, colouring, ink. Yet the most perishable material is at the same time the most durable substance in the world . . .
​Lion Feuchtwanger
Author of The Oppermanns
Born July 7, 1884

There's this old saying that, if you aren't particularly gifted in natural sciences, if you don't want to become a teacher or pastor or doctor, and don't know what else to do, then you become a lawyer. But I've never regretted it.
​Bernhard Schlink
Author of The Reader
Born July 6, 1944

I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called.
​James M. Cain
Author of The Postman Always Rings Twice
Born July 1, 1892

Courtesy is not dead—it has merely taken refuge in Great Britain.
​Georges Duhamel
Author of The New Book of Martyrs
Born June 30, 1884

I cry, sometimes, because I'm not twenty years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics.
​Oriana Fallaci
Author of A Man
Born June 29, 1929

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale; diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
​Ambrose Bierce
Author of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek"
Born June 24, 1842

What a strange distance there is between ill people and well ones.
​Winifred Holtby
Author of The Land of Green Ginger
Born on June 23, 1898

I was not raised to be someone's wife. I was raised so that things should be evenly distributed.
​Joie Lee
Author of Crooklyn
Born June 22, 1962

There is, indeed, no single quality of the cat that man could not emulate to his advantage.
​Carl Van Vechten
Author of The Tattooed Countess
Born June 17, 1880

No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else.
​Katharine Graham
Author of The Pentagon Papers
Born June 16, 1917

In America you can get away with murder, but not with sex.
​Xaviera Hollander
Author of The Happy Hooker
Born June 15, 1943

I got back to work on the book about a month ago, but was dealt some crushing financial blows three weeks later and now I’m back in the short story business. I want to write short stories like I want to fuck a chicken. [Excerpt from a letter to writer John Weaver,  February 24, 1947.]
​John Cheever
Author of The Wapshot Chronicle
Born May 27, 1912

We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.
​Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Author of The Turkish Embassy Letters
Born May 26, 1689

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics; to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social position; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived; this is to have succeeded.
​Ralph Waldo Emerson
Author of "Self-Reliance"
Born May 25, 1803