We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
​Tennessee Williams
Born March 26, 1911

All my years of campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn’t the most we can do, but it is the least.
​Gloria Steinem
Born March 25, 1934

There was never a great man who had not a great mother.
​Olive Schreiner
​Born March 24, 1855

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.
​Philip Roth
​Born March 18, 1933

Every system of power in the world has a vested interest in weakening the individuality of its subjects and tries to weaken or it possible completely extinguish it.
​Christa Wolf
Born March 18, 1929

I'm intrigued by the way in which physical appearance can often direct a person's life; things happen differently for a beautiful woman than for a plain one.
​Penelope Lively
Born March 17, 1933

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.
​George Berkeley
​Born March 12, 1685

Every generation of young men and women in America has questions to ask the world, but every now and again in the history of the Republic a different kind of question presents itself—a question that asks, not about the future of an individual or even of a generation, but about the future of the country.
​Franklin D. Roosevelt
Born January 30, 1882

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.
​Germaine Greer
Born January 29, 1939

I love my past, I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it.
​Colette
Born January 28, 1873

I think the most important thing journalism taught me is to mine for details. The details are key. You can't try to be funny or strange or poignant; you have to let the details be funny or strange or poignant for you. 
​Karen Abbott
Born January 23, 1973

                                                The leaf’s boundary
            is a pane of thick, waterstained glass, yet
            its shadow becomes permanent
            against your mouth; it can separate
 
            your hair, your thin definitions, stars.

​Sheila Zamora
Born January 22, 1947

What people don't understand about the Arctic is that this isn't just about those other people, those Eskimos that have nothing to do with us. The Arctic drives the climate of the whole globe.
​Gretel Ehrlich
Born January 21, 1946

I advise, if you're stymied by a passage or paragraph or plot point—whether it's for an assignment from the outside world or one that comes only from within—get up from wherever you're sitting, walk outdoors, and do nothing but look at the sky for five minutes. Just stare at that thing. Then execute a small bow and go back in.
​Lydia Millet
Born December 5, 1968

We must level with the people and explain to them that Social Security will first face funding problems in 2042 that can be fixed now with changes that do not undermine and ultimately drain from the entire program.
​Grace Napolitano
Born December 4, 1936

If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks, it's not funny.
​Kate O’Brien
Born December 3, 1897

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down . . . some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.
​Aaron Copland
Born November 14, 1900

Good things come to those who wait . . . far too long.
​William Gibson
Born November 13, 1914

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles,  and see that the world is moving.
​Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Born November 12, 1815

Writing is never, ever easy but I wake up every morning grateful for the gift of being able to do this. 
​Guy Gavriel Kay
Born November 7, 1954

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
​Colley Cibber
Born November 6, 1671

But if politics is an art, it is not like sculpture or painting, where one side acts and the other is passive material. It is more like drama without a script, or dance without choreography—in other words, improvisation. Either player may surprise us again with a new move.
​Thomas Flanagan
Born November 5, 1923

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called “truth.”
​Dan Rather
Born on October 31, 1931

When people ask me where my roots are, I look down at my feet, and I see the roots of my soul grasping the earth. They are here . . . in the Southwest . . . I still live in New Mexico.
​Rudolfo Anaya
Born October 30, 1937

I would sit in my room and become hysterical about the wild incredible story I was writing. And I thought I was writing realism. It never occurred to me that I was writing absurdity. Realism and absurdity are so similar in the lives of American blacks one cannot tell the difference.
​Chester Himes
Born October 29, 1909