None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for lifetime.
​Gail Godwin,  American Novelist & Short Story Writer
Author of ​The Good Husband 
Born June 18, 1937

Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.
​John Wesley,  English Cleric, Theologian, & Evangelist
Author of Sermon, "The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption"
Born June 17,  1703

Professors of classics—not even a professor of English—professors of classics, they’re something sacred; it’s almost like being a priest.
​Erich Segal,  American Novelist, Educator, & Classicist
Author of Love Story
Born June 16, 1937

My mother had a master’s degree and had been a schoolteacher before she started having kids at thirty. But my father's family were landowners, farmer-merchants. Moneymaking was extremely important, like one of those semi-rapacious families in Lillian Hellman, where they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
​
​Allan Gurganus,  LGBTQIA+ Novelist & Short Story Writer
​Author of ​Plays Well with Others
Born June 11,  1947

There was no good or bad in the world; everything was as it should be...
 
​Er was geen goed of slecht in de wereld; alles was zooals het wezen moest...

​Louis Couperus,  Dutch Novelist & Poet
Author of The Hidden Force (De stille kracht)
​Born June 9, 1863

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
​Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
​John Howard Payne,  American Actor, Poet, & Playwright 
Author of ​Home, Sweet Home
Born June 9, 1791

In THE INTERESTINGS I wanted to write about what happens to talent over time. In some people talent blooms,  in others it falls away.
​Meg Wolitzer,  American Novelist
​Author of THE INTERESTINGS
​Born May 28, 1959

If you aren’t rich, you should always look useful.
​Louis-Ferdinand Céline, French Novelist and Physician
Author of ​Castle to Castle
Born May 27, 1894

You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you.
Isadora Duncan,  Dancer and ​Choreographer 
Born May 26, 1877

Someday is not a day of the week . . . .
​Janet Dailey,  Novelist
Author of  Calder Pride
Born May 21, 1944

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
John Stuart Mill, British Philosopher and Political Economist 
Author of ​On Liberty
Born May 20, 1806

I think it is about time that equipped women began to take on some of the ethical questions which a male-dominated culture has produced and dissect and analyze them quite to pieces in a serious fashion. It is time that “half the human race” had something to say about the nature of its existence.
​Lorraine Hansberry,  Playwright
Author of A Raisin in the Sun
Born May 19, 1930

All life worth living is difficult, nobody promised us happiness; it is not a commodity you have earned, or shall ever earn. It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the season we hoped for, or as the result of our planning for it.
​Katherine Anne Porter, Journalist and Fiction Writer
Author of Ship of Fools
Born May 15, 1890

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
Hal Borland,  American Journalist and Naturalist
Author of Sundial of the Seasons
Born May 14, 1900

You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there’s a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.
​Lena Dunham
​Author of Not That Kind of Girl
Born May 13, 1986

Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever till the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money!
​George Carlin, Stand-Up Comic and Author
Author of ​Class Clown
Born May 12, 1937

Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.
Roddy Doyle, Irish Novelist
​Author of Smile
Born May 8, 1958

It’s technically extremely difficult to get down what you really mean, not what you think you mean, or what you think sounds good, but what’s really there, what you really have to express, in words that somehow convey that meaning in an approximate way.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Author of ​Heat and Dust
​Born May 7, 1927

I’m very interested in silence. And, more importantly, in what happens when people aren’t talking on stage. I’m interested in letting actors play and do things between the lines. And in slowing everything down.
​Annie Baker,  American Playwright 
Author of ​The Antipodes
Born May 6, 1981

The difference between being a part-time writer and a full-time writer is like the difference between dating someone and living with them. Some of the romance is gone, but you learn things you’d never know just by dating. 
Scott Westerfeld,  Author of Young Adult Literature
Author of Imposters
Born May 5, 1963

Sex is perhaps like culture—a luxury that only becomes an art after generations of leisurely acquaintance. Why we scarcely approach either as individuals—it’s mass propulsion still!
Alice B. Toklas
Author of ​Murder in the Kitchen
Born April 30, 1877

How lovely they were, those long summer nights: the words and the silences, the sunsets and the stars.
​Polly Samson, British
Author of ​A Theatre for Dreamers
​Born April 29, 1962

I never expected any sort of success with Mockingbird . . . I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.
​Harper Lee
Author of To Kill a Mockingbird
​Born April 28, 1926

If life is a teacher, I am like a student who is unable to answer his questions in front of the class. What I wanted was to disappear, to disappear, to disappear from the mocking gazes of the other students. Gone from their sight.
Soe Tjen Marching
Author of The End of Silence: Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia
Born April 23, 1971

My parents were mourning the death of my sister. She was killed in a car accident before I was born, and I didn’t know she existed until I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I knew I was growing up in a house where people were angry and sad.
Andrew Hudgins, Poet
Author of A Clown at Midnight: Poems
​Born April 22, 1951