Rita Mae Brown quotes:

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  • One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

  • Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual.

  • Political elections are not life and death.

  • While cats can be infuriating, little old women in fur coats, they make me laugh. Of course, dogs, horses and my highly social chickens are dear to me, too.

  • Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

  • Life is too short to be miserable.

  • Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

  • Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.

  • I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain.

  • We animals live life in all its glorious uncertainty. Why do politicians think they can control events?

  • I have no idea what will come next in my writing life or life in general. I like not knowing, but I know what I want. That doesn't mean it will happen, but I'll give it my best try.

  • As a woman, I find it very embarrassing to be in a meeting and realize I'm the only one in the room with balls.

  • A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.

  • Dean: Don't you find that somewhat of an aberration? Doesn't this disturb you my dear? After all, it's not normal. Molly: I know it's not normal for people in this world to be happy, and I'm happy."

  • Humor comes from self-confidence.

  • All creatures tread across the rubble of ruined civilizations. The trick is to keep moving. No animal ever goes about dispensing shallow compassion.

  • Leroy bet me I couldn't find a pot of gold at the end, and I told him that was a stupid bet because the rainbow was enough.

  • I became a lesbian because of women, because women are beautiful, strong, and compassionate.

  • I've met many irresponsible people in my life but never an irresponsible cat.

  • Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

  • Alcohol is an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind.

  • The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.

  • I don't think you can ever assess your work. I don't think Turgenev could assess his any more than I can assess mine, and his didn't have a social impact as much as great literary impact.

  • To love without role, without power plays, is revolution.

  • No one remembers her beginnings. Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won't forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we'll include them in our future."

  • Education is a wonderful thing. If you couldn't sign your name you'd have to pay cash.

  • A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.

  • Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television.

  • I believe the true function of age is memory. I'm recording as fast as I can.

  • I mean, what do people talk about when they're married? Their kids, I guess. Maybe that's all they have in common.

  • About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.

  • About all you can do in life is be who you are.

  • Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through. Sport gives players an opportunity to know and test themselves. The great difference between sport and art is that sport, like a sonnet, forces beauty within its own system. Art, on the other hand, cyclically destroys boundaries and breaks free.

  • Why marry a woman if you're going to betray her, and if you're going to betray her, why beat her? The fault is not hers ... I sometimes think the worst we do, we do behind closed doors.

  • The owner of Mojo's was a suicide blonde, dyed by her own hand.

  • Book tours are like boot camp but with little sleep and less food.

  • I hate the telephone. I think the lowest circle of hell is reserved for Alexander Graham Bell.

  • You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it.

  • There's a thin line between collectivity and chaos...

  • Consider the "new" woman. She's trying to be Pollyanna Borgia, clearly a conflict of interest. She's supposed to be a ruthless winner at work and a bundle of nurturing sweetness at home.

  • The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.

  • A controller doesn't trust his/her ability to live through the pain and chaos of life. There is no life without pain just as there is no art without submitting to chaos.

  • A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.

  • Morals are private. Decency is public.

  • Normal is the average of deviance.

  • It really doesn't take brains to be a politician as much as it takes stomach. Both would be nice, but in America we have accepted diminishing returns in this arena.

  • I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority.

  • I am a comic writer, which means I get to slay the dragons, and shoot the bull.

  • Femininity and masculinity are social constructs. Female and male are biological. We don't have to learn to be men or women but we do have to learn to be ladies and gentlemen.

  • all outcast peoples struggle to be recognized as individuals. The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality. You're just a faggot. Or whatever - fill in the blank. Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people.

  • Divorce: fission after fusion.

  • The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

  • Anyone of my generation who trusts government probably has an I.Q. that would make a good golf score.

  • the reason for revolution is so the good things in life circulate.

  • So much of life is happenstance. It makes me laugh when I go to a bookstore and see all those titles about controlling your life. You're lucky if you can control your bladder.

  • Writers will happen in the best of families.

  • Divorce is the one human tragedy that reduces everything to cash.

  • You can love more than one person at a time, and I don't give a damn what the self-help books say.

  • I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss.

  • I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usually noble in some manner) but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict.

  • Intuition is a suspension of logic due to impatience.

  • English is weak in describing emotional states or intensities of interpersonal relationships.

  • When Mother died I was both freed and abandoned, as are we all at this profound juncture in our lives.

  • Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.

  • Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.

  • When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.

  • If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.

  • Pornography exists for the lonesome, the ugly, the fearful - it's made for the losers.

  • You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners.

  • Aunt Mimi possessed a horror of silence, which she battled with endless chat. The Typhoid Mary of the Telephone started her calls at 6:30 each morning.

  • Mother believed in enjoying herself. Aunt Mimi believed in enjoying herself, then feeling guilty about it.

  • Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.

  • I don't want to die. I think death is a greatly overrated experience.

  • In America the word revolutionary is used to sell pantyhose.

  • [A pariah is] something like a martyr with more suffering and less class.

  • Show me a writer, any writer, who hasn't suffered and I'll show you someone who writes in pastels as opposed to primary colors.

  • If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

  • What's the point of prolonging your life if you don't enjoy it? It's your body. Do whatever you want with it. Better to wear out than rust over.

  • I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.

  • I no longer idolize reason. I have come to accept that ninety percent of what we do is irrational and that we spend what little rational thought we have in justifying our irrationality.

  • Tennis, imprisoned within fixed boundaries, a patch of an acre, a green rectangle, tries the human soul. A tennis court is like a coffin, only larger.

  • Leroy bet me I couldn't find a pot of gold at the end, and I told him that was a stupid bet because the rainbow was enough

  • I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it's harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off.

  • Don't ask to live in tranquil times. Literature doesn't grow there.

  • Loving's pretty easy. It's letting someone love you that's hard.

  • Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.

  • I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.

  • The real reason Milton went blind was to avoid reading unsolicited manuscripts.

  • If Michaelangelo were a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.

  • We have the ability to be the Athens of modern times as opposed to the militaristic Sparta. I remind you that the Athenians wrote poetry. The Spartans did not.

  • Knowing Latin and having two years of Attic Greek gave me the strong foundation upon which I've built a career. I think the classical training, more than anything, has provided me with longevity.

  • People are like tea bags; you never know how strong they'll be until they're in hot water. In times of trouble, you not only discover what you truly believe but whether or not you can act on your beliefs.

  • Recognition of function always precedes recognition of being.

  • While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man", And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

  • Dad could charm a dog off a meat wagon.

  • Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish.

  • If you don't like my book, write your own.

  • Sex is a pleasurable exercise in plumbing, but be careful or you'll get yeast in your drain tap.

  • Cats and dogs believe politicians are like cemetery caregivers; they are on top of everyone, but nobody listens.

  • Women who love women are Lesbians. Men, because they can only think of women in sexual terms, define Lesbian as sex between women.

  • I earned two Emmy nominations for writing, and two of the shows I had written were nominated for best in their category.

  • Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

  • If you like my novels, I commend your good taste.

  • No animal on the face of the earth could conceive of taxation. You and I work roughly six months a year to pay our local, state and federal taxes. If nothing else, this should convince you that animals are smarter than people.

  • Every action is either strong or weak, and when every action is strong we are successful.

  • ... I distrust manifest knowledge.

  • ... I have always been suspicious of romantic love. It looks too much like a narcissism shared by two ...

  • ...funny how people want a return to the good ole days. Of coarse the good ole days of being a rich white plantation owner. Everyone seems to forget the poor white farmer.

  • A narcissism shared by two.

  • Adjectives are the curse of America.

  • All decisions are made on insufficient evidence.

  • American hunting is quite different from English hunting because we don't hunt to kill. Even if I wanted to kill a fox, I couldn't. They're too smart and they have too many ways to escape me, whereas they don't in England.

  • An army of lovers shall not fail.

  • Any woman whose I.Q. hovers above her body temperature must be a feminist.

  • Armies are dependent on youthful male ignorance.

  • As for loving woman, I have never understood why some people had a fit. I still don't. It seems fine to me. If an individual is productive responsible, and energetic, why should her choice in a partner make such a fuss? The government is only too happy to take my tax money and yet they uphold legislation that keeps me a second class citizen. Surely, there should be a tax break for those of us who are robbed of full and equal participation and protection in the life of our nation.

  • Class is much more than Marx's definition of relationship to the means of production. Class involved your behavior, your basic assumptions, how you are taught to behave, what you expect from yourself and from others, your concept of a future, how you understand problems and solve them, how you think, feel, act.

  • compromise is the work of mature people.

  • Computer dating is fine, if you're a computer.

  • Computer dating? It's terrific if you're a computer!

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