Quotes by Women Authors

Husbands and wives quarrel a lot more than anyone thinks, and it's oftener about little things than big ones.

Patricia Wentworth

The greatest act of love was to make a tape for someone. It was the only way we could share music and it was also a way of advertising yourself. Selection, order, the lettering you used for the track list, how much technical detail you went into, whether or not you added artwork or offered only artwork and no track list at all, these choices were as codified as a Victorian bouquet.

Lavinia Greenlaw

Foolish eyes, thy streams give over,
Wine, not water, binds the lover:
At the table then be shining,
Gay coquette, and all designing.

When we fill our thoughts with right things, the wrong ones have no room to enter

I suppose my forcefulness will improve once my voice changes. Sopranos get no respect.

Patricia Grasso

How dare you, unless you can hold up your own life as a model of rectitude, achievement, and halcyon happiness, open your mouth about the stubborn secrets of living?

Celestine Sibley

It ought to be a crime for any woman to have children that writes books.

Josephine Daskam Bacon

Secrets are lies that you tell to your friends.

I love to live vicariously, in a book or a holo, but I think I can stand one dose of reality before it's my time.

People think they have to be good before they can act good. But... it works just as well the other way 'round.

The Christian Scientists held that it was not God Who wanted sickness, but man who [put] himself in the way of suffering. If this were the case, though, wouldn't we all die in perfect health?

Sometimes you have to take a hard decision and when you take such decision, you have to stand by it. It's not everybody who sees what you are seeing.

An astronomer who can devote his life to the sublime study of the heavenly bodies, and not exclaim, with deep humility of spirit, Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Thou art worthy to receive glory, and honor, and power, for thou hast "created all things, and for thy pleasure they were created," is a madman indeed.

Mary Ann Harris Gay

Love is a state of the heart, but also, an activity. And quite an awesome one.

Last night I had rinsed out my sari strip and briefs in the sea. I walked down naked to where they hung in the branches of the silvery leafed tree beside the creek. Underneath the lazy sensuality of a luxurious stretch from toes to nose I felt the strong unequivocal demand of my blood. I hugged myself for a moment watching the grey light yield to dawn through half-closed eyes.

A poem is a box, a thing, to put other things in. For safe keeping.

Marianne Boruch

Order, cleanliness, seemliness make a structure that is half support, half ritual, and - if it does not create it - maintains decency.

Florida Scott-Maxwell

I've come down in the world. I've slid to a place where the ceiling is low and there isn't much room for me to move.Most of the time I'm good. I accepted my sentence and do not brood or look back. But sometimes a shift makes me remember. Routine is ruffled and a new start makes me suddenly conscious of what I've become -

There had been a frozen mist here, and the trees were spun into feathers. Their fragile brilliance made me wonder why, into the spotlessness of Creation, God had seen fit to introduce soiling, twisting, rampaging, Man.

What compels any of us to do the things we do when deep down a part of us just wants to break free from it all?

Children live in a way that is very generous. They learn from a young age what you value; they watch your every move. If you value writing, they will learn quickly to value it too, as something they can give to someone, or receive with pleasure from someone else.

Streets like the one she lived on were no accident. They were the North's lynch mobs, she thought bitterly; the method the big cities used to keep Negroes in their place.

It's not the fledgling birds that are thrown out of the nest by their parents and made to fly; it's the parents who are made to get the hell out of cozy family nest by their teenage offspring. It's we who are made to be independent of them, crash-landing if we don't manage it.

Rosamund Lupton

But one day, the things that make you free start to keep you down.

Jardine Libaire

The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

Clarice Lispector