I like to call it nighttime brain: the way your mind seems to function on a different frequency than it does during daylight hours—which can be good or bad but also can lead to unexpected epiphanies or experiences that wouldn't be the same at any other time of day.
​Erin Morgenstern, Author of The Starless Sea
Born July 8, 1978

By limiting or denying freedom of speech and expression, we take away a lot of potential. We take away thoughts and ideas before they even have the opportunity to hatch. We build a world around negatives—you can't say, think, or do this or that.
​Jill McCorkle, Author of Life After Life
Born July 7, 1957

If I don't like someone and I start reading their stuff, it seems like my brain will just automatically start criticizing everything that's there. It's really hard to read a book without having all this outside information telling you what to think about it.
​Tao Lin, Author of Taipei 
Born July 2, 1983

Most of my writing takes place at a cramped desk in a cramped apartment, so whenever I get to write on a train or make notes on a road trip, it has an entirely different cadence. And I can remember specific writing sessions while on a train through beautiful countryside in a way I can remember almost nothing else.
​Genevieve Valentine,
​Author of The Girls at the Kingfisher Club
Born July 1, 1981

If I could make Panther tough, mysterious, wily, and often at odds with his Avengers comrades, that was a character I'd find interesting.
​​Christopher Priest, Author of ​The Black Panther
Born June 30, 1961

I came from Yale, where you get an extracurricular degree in self-importance because you went there. When AIDS happened, I was treated like an outcast. And I don't like that feeling.
​Larry Kramer, Author of Faggots
Born June 25, 1935

I try to use all of my senses when describing a setting, and try to think of everything that would impact a character in any given scene.
​Mercedes Lackey, ​Author of Arrows of the Queen
Born June 24, 1950

Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
​Richard Bach, Author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Born June 23, 1936

One of the soundest rules I try to remember when making forecasts in the field of economics is that whatever is to happen is happening already.
​Sylvia Field Porter,
​Author of Sylvia Porter's Money Book
Born June 18, 1913

I don't steal stories. If I'm a plagiarist, so is Hitchcock. And Tolkien. And Shakespeare.
​Kerry Greenwood, Author of Murder in the Dark
Born June 17, 1954

A story in your head isn't a story. It's just a daydream until you actually write it down. So write it down.
​Andy Weir, Author of The Martian
Born June 16, 1972

I rise at six. Strong coffee helps me face the paper edition of The New York Times. It daily challenges my own capacity for faking anything deranged enough to sound true. I work till two p.m., unless I am in the throes of finishing something. I rewrite to be reread.
​Allan Gurganus
Born June 11, 1947
​Author of White People

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
​Saul Bellow
June 10, 1915
​Author of Herzog, Winner of National Book Award

I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power.
​Patricia Cornwell
Born June 9, 1956
Author of Depraved Heart

This mindless tolerance, which places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence of both anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism.
​Susan Jacoby,
​Author of The Age of American Unreason
Born June 4, 1945

Perfectionism is a dangerous state of mind in an imperfect world.
​Robert Hillyer, Poet
Born June 3, 1895

The desire for self-improvement is vital. There is no point in pushing children; they need to be the ones who want to learn new skills.
​Tony Buzan, Inventor of Mind Mapping
Born June 2, 1942

I thought it [Diamonds Are Forever] was great fun myself and I only wish that people would write more books of exotic and fantastic adventure instead of whining away in contrived prose about their happy childhood and their ghastly lives in corrugated iron universities.
​Ian Fleming
Born May 28, 1908

I love writing about black women, but if you go beyond that, we're human beings—and because we're human beings, it's universal for everybody.
​Mara Brock Akil
Born May 27, 1970

I like things to reverberate, to be suggestive.
Alan Hollinghurst
Born May 26, 1954

The awful thing, as a kid reading, was that you came to the end of the story, and that was it. I mean, it would be heartbreaking that there was no more of it.
Robert Creeley
Born May 21, 1926

I went to work in an office and learned, among other lessons, to do things I did not care for, and to do them well. Before I left this office, two of my books had already been published.
​Sigrid Undset
Born May 20, 1882

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
​Nora Ephron
Born May 19, 1941

For everyone, there are those moments when you have great days with someone you wouldn't expect to. Then you have to go back to your real lives, but it makes an impression on you.
​Sofia Coppola
​Born May 14, 1971

The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.
​Armistead Maupin
Born May 18, 1944