Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity.
​Michael Ondaatje
Born September 12, 1943

I consider myself kind of a reporter—one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.
​Mary Oliver
Born September 10, 1935

I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; sixty percent were either ten years old or older.
​Jonathan Kozol
September 5, 1936

It is curious that, with my somewhat antinomian tendencies, I should have gone to Trinity Hall—which was, and is, before all a Law College—and should thus have been thrown into close touch with the legal element in life.
​Edward Carpenter
Born August 29, 1844

I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
​Jeanette Winterson
Born August 27, 1959

To me, the most beautiful word in the English language is cellar-door. Isn’t it wonderful? The ones I like, though, are “cheque” and “enclosed.”
​Dorothy Parker
Born August 22, 1893

Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.
​H. P. Lovecraft
Born August 20, 1890

I am not altogether confident of my ability to put my thoughts into words: My texts are usually better after an editor has hacked away at them, and I am used to both editing and being edited. Which is to say that I am not oversensitive in such matters.
​Stieg Larsson
Born on August 15, 1954

I'm not sure that it's possible to write a novel about people who don't transgress or stumble, people who don't surprise themselves with the things they do, people who can explain all their actions with perfect logical consistency. At least it's not possible for me to write that sort of novel.
​Tom Perrotta
Born August 13, 1961

Writing is agony for me. I work at it eight hours every day, hoping to get six pages, but I am satisfied with three.
​Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Born August 8, 1896

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
​Herman Melville
​Born August 1, 1819

If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea.
​David Belasco
Born July 25, 1853

The greatest texts, I think, first dazzle, then with careful rereading, they instruct. I have learned from Virginia Woolf more than I even know how to articulate.
​Lauren Groff
Born July 23, 1978

There are two kinds of marriages—where the husband quotes the wife and where the wife quotes the husband.
​Clifford Odets
Born July 18, 1906

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.
​Tony Kushner
Born July 16, 1956

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
​E. B. White
Born July 11, 1899

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think.
​June Jordan
Born July 9, 1936

One of the things you hope you've done as a playwright is create roles that can sustain different interpretations.
Tracy Letts
Born July 4, 1965

“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.”
From Siddhartha By Herman Hesse 
Born July 2, 1877

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.
​Edith Wharton
​Born January 24, 1862

No man,
Til thirty,  should perceive there’s a
plain woman.

​Lord Byron
Born January 22, 1788

All our talents increase in the using, and every faculty, both good and bad, strengthens by exercise: therefore, if you choose to use the bad, or those which tend to evil till they become your masters, and neglect the good till they dwindle away, you have only yourself to blame.
​Anne Brontë
​Born January 17, 1820

I just loved jokes so much as a child. I remember wanting to perform at, like . . . age seven by reading from a kids’ joke book, and my parents being like, “That's not what standup comedy is,” and me being like, “Not yet it isn't! I'm going to change the game.”
​Josh Gondelman
Born January 15, 1985

Money makes people bold and cosmopolitan; if you are poor, you are naturally conservative. It's not easy to be a bohemian when you have to worry about what is going to happen with you and with your next paycheck.
​Antonio Muñoz Molina
Born on January 10, 1956

When I was on the bestseller list with the first book, everyone who knows me knows that every week it continued to be on the list was a very dark week for me. Everyone knows that all I wanted was to be off that list.
​Dave Eggers
Born on January 8, 1970