Race is not particularly interesting to me. Power is. Who has power and who doesn't. Slavery interests me because it's an incredible violation that has not stopped. It's necessary to talk about that. Race is a diversion.
​Jamaica Kincaid
Author of Lucy
​Born May 25, 1949

Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” If you're really engaged in the writing, you'll work yourself out of whatever jam you find yourself in.
​Michael Chabon
Author of Wonder Boys
​Born May 24, 1963

We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings. We are fighting for . . . human rights.
​Malcolm X
Author of By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter
​Born May 19, 1925

When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.
​Tina Fey
Author of Bossypants
​Born May 18, 1970

Man is completely out of phase with nature. Nature is woman. Man is the intruder. The man who re-attunes himself with nature is the man who de-mans himself or eliminates himself as man.
​Jill Johnston
Author of Lesbian Nation
Born May 17, 1929

If there are no conditions for an active art scene, it is our duty to create them.
​Clementina Suárez
Honduran Poet
​​Born May 12, 1902

. . . Indians still consider the whites a brutal people who treat their children like enemies—playthings, too, coddling them like pampered pets or fragile toys, but underneath always like enemies, enemies that must be restrained, bribed, spied upon, and punished. They believe that children so treated will grow up as dependent and immature as pets and toys, and as angry and dangerous as enemies within the family circle, to be appeased and fought.
​Mari Sandoz
Author of The Battle of the Little Bighorn
Born May 11, 1896

As a reader, I have a very short attention span and a low tolerance for boredom, and I find that comes in handy with my writing. If I get bored writing something, I pity the people who will then try to read it.
​John Scalzi
Author of The Collapsing Empire
​Born May 10, 1969 

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
​Karl Marx
Author of Das Kapital
​Born May 5, 1818

If you said, “I’m giving up smoking,” people would put on a parade. If you said, “I’m going to eat more healthily,” people would say, “Good for you.” If it’s drinking, the first reaction is, “That’s so boring. You’re going to be so boring.”
​Kate Garraway
Author of The Joy of Big Knickers 
Born May 4, 1967

Kings and cabbages go back to compost, but good deeds stay green forever.
​Rick DeMarinis
Author of The Art and Craft of the Short Story
​Born May 3, 1934

I wish the world was run by women. Women who have given birth and know the value of their creation.
​Simin Daneshvar
Author of A City Like Paradise
​Born April 28, 1921

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.
​August Wilson
Playwright, Fences
​Born April 27, 1945

When I was in college at UCLA, I took a playwriting course. I was all set to be a writer. But I had to take this acting class as a theater arts major. I had to do this scene in a one-act comedy. I just said this line, and then . . . this laugh happened. I thought, “Whoa. This is a really good feeling. What have I been missing?”
​Carol Burnett
Author of One More Time: A Memoir
Born April 26, 1933

I think that the practice of writing every day was what made me remember that writing doesn't have anything to do with publishing books. It can be totally separate and private—a comforting thought.
​Nell Freudenberger
Author of Lost and Wanted
​Born April 21, 1975

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. [Dissenting opinion in U.S. Supreme Court, Bush v. Gore, December 12, 2000]
J​ohn Paul Stevens
Author of The Making of a Justice: Reflections on My First 94 Years
​Born April 20, 1920

At any rate one can say that equal status has been achieved when women, like men, are still allowed to appear on television when they’re old, with all their wrinkles. There’s practically no age-limit for men, you know. 
Lilli Gruber
Italian Journalist
​Born April 19, 1957

Producing writing is not so much like filling a basin or pool once, but rather getting water to keep flowing through till finally it runs clear.
​Peter Elbow
Author of Writing with Power
Born April 14, 1935

I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment.
Seamuś Heaney
Author of Death of a Naturalist
Born April 13, 1939

My mother always kept library books in the house, and one rainy Sunday afternoon—this was before television, and we didn't even have a radio—I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered I was reading and enjoying what I read.
​Beverly Cleary
Author of over 40 books, including Ramona the Brave
Born April 12, 1916

Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. They've been a laboratory for everybody.
​Donald Barthelme
Author of The Dead Father
Born April 7, 1931

There's a radical—and wonderful—new idea here . . . that all children could and should be inventors of their own theories, critics of other people's ideas, analyzers of evidence, and makers of their own personal marks on the world. Its an idea with revolutionary implications. If we take it seriously.
​Deborah Meier
Author of These Schools Belong to You and Me
Born April 6, 1931

When I talk to girls, they go, “I'm not a feminist.” And I say: “What? You don't want to vote? Do you want to be owned by your husband? Do you want your money from your job to go into his bank account? If you were raped, do you still want that to be a crime? Congratulations: you are a feminist.”
​Caitlin Moran
Author of More Than a Woman
​Born April 5, 1975

When it grows dark, we always need someone. This thought, the product of anxiety, only comes to me in the evenings, just when I'm about to end my writerly explorations.
​Enrique Vila-Matas
Author of Bartleby and Co
Born March 31, 1948

Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption.
​Paul Reiser
Author of Familyhood 
Born March 30, 1957