Like all the centuries and the millennia that have preceded it on earth, the new century also observes the well-known, immobile principle of historical dynamics: power to some, servitude to others.
Elsa Morante, Italian Novelist & Poet
Author of ​History
Born August 18, 1918

Many search for happiness as we look for a hate [sic] we wear on our heads.
​Nikolaus Lenau,  Austrian Poet
Author of The Swabian Songbook: A Selection from Classical Swabian Poetry
​Born August 13, 1802

What has happened to our ability to dwell in the unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting.
​Sue Monk Kidd,  American Writer of Historical Fiction 
Author of ​The Secret Life of Bees
Born August 12, 1948

The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.
Enid Blyton,  British Children's Writer
Author of ​The Enchanted Wood
​Born August 11, 1897

Writing is like anything—baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.
​Betsy Byars, American Author of Children's Books
Author of ​Summer of the Swans
Born August 7,  1928

To be a good storyteller one must be gloriously alive. It is not possible to kindle fresh fires from burned-out embers. I have noticed that the best of the traditional storytellers whom I have heard have been those who live close to the heart of things-to the earth, the sea, wind and weather. They have been those who knew solitude, silence. They have been given unbroken time in which to feel deeply, to reach constantly for understanding. They have come to know the power of the spoken word. These storytellers have been sailors and peasants, wanderers and fisherman.
​Ruth Sawyer,  Writer of Fiction and Non-Fiction for Children and Adults
Author of ​Roller Skates
Born August 5, 1880

It's good not only to realize that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for.
​Dennis Lehane,  Author and Screenwriter 
Author of ​Mystic River
Born August 4, ​1965

Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way they did it before the digital age. The photograph, as it was printed in the darkroom, became visible bit by bit. As you read your way through a novel, the same chemical process takes place.
​Patrick Modiano,  French Novelist, Nobel Prize Winner
Author of ​Ballerina
Born July 30, 1945

What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren't supposed to work if they had families. What were they going to do when the children are grown—watch the raindrops coming down the window pane?
​Jackie Kennedy, Former First Lady, Author, and Editor at Doubleday 
Author of ​One Special Summer
Born July 28, 1929

As you get older no doubt you'll change automatically, just like I did. You will learn all the tricks. You will dress much better, and talk much more, and listen much less. And you'll start to realise that it never does one much good to take anything too seriously at all.
Caroline Blackwood,  Writer and Socialite
Author of ​Great Granny Webster
Born July 16,  ​1931

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.
​Lydia Davis,  American Short Story Writer and Novelist
Author of ​Our Strangers
Born July 15, 1947

When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have.
​Owen Wister,  American Novelist 
Author of  The Virginian
Born July 14,  1860

A WRITER'S WIT
Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another’s view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.
Marcel Proust,  French Novelist and Critic
Author of ​In Search of Lost Time
Born July 10, 1871

Men are just as willing as women to marry up, and life is now giving them the opportunity... So, women, own up to your accomplishments, buy him a drink, and tell him what you really do.
​Liza Mundy,  American Journalist, Non-Fiction Writer, and Fellow at New America Foundation
Author of Code Girls The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
Born July 8, 1960

I’ve been readen th Bible an a hunten God fer a long while—off an on—but it ain’t so easy as picken up a nickel off the floor.
​Harriette Simpson Arnow, American Novelist & Historian 
Author of Old Burnside
​Born July 7, 1908

Each man’s life represents a road toward himself . . . .
​Hermann Hesse, German-Swiss Poet and Novelist
Author of ​Siddhartha 
Born July 2, 1877

I really enjoy writing novels. It’s like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.
Denis Johnson,  American Novelist & Short-Story Writer
Author of  The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Born July 1, 1949

Sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure.
​Assia Djebar (Fatima-Zohra Imalayen),  Algerian Novelist & Translator
Author of The Disappearance of the French Language (La Disparition de la langue française)
Born June 30, 1936

If something anticipated arrives too late it finds us numb, wrung out from waiting, and we feel—nothing at all. The best things arrive on time.
​Dorothy Gilman,  American Writer of Spy Novels
Author of ​The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax
Born June 25, 1923

The people who keep coping, keep trying, no matter how many blows Fate takes at them. Nobody’ll make a song about them, but they’re heroes all the same.
​Mercedes Lackey,  American Writer of Fantasy Novels
​Author of The Outstretched Shadow
Born June 24, 1950

Everything in France is a pretext for a good dinner.
​Jean Anouilh, French  Dramatist & Screenwriter
Author of ​Becket
​Born June 23, 1910

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