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Quotable Women, like BeMoreCreative.com, encourages thinking, working, and living more creatively. Creativity is "the power to connect the seemingly unconnected" (W. Plommer). To support this work, we earn a small affiliate commission. Please browse creatively!


Anais Nin: The shell is...

Anais Nin: The shell is...

The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it...

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Natalia Ginzburg: Children should be...

Natalia Ginzburg: Children should be...

Children should be taught not the little virtues but the great ones. Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to...

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Ellen Glasgow: A tragic irony...

Ellen Glasgow: A tragic irony...

A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which...

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Jessamyn West: A rattlesnake that...

Jessamyn West: A rattlesnake that...

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

Source: The Life I Really...

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Maxine Hong Kingston: To me success...

Maxine Hong Kingston: To me success...

To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world -- that I...

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Ariel Durant: Education is the...

Ariel Durant: Education is the...

Education is the transmission of civilization.

Source: In Peter's Quotations, by...

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Djuna Barnes: I'm a fart...

Djuna Barnes: I'm a fart...

I'm a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat.

Source: Doctor, in...

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Djuna Barnes: Life is painful,...

Djuna Barnes: Life is painful,...

Life is painful, nasty and short . . . in my case it has only been painful and nasty.

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Muriel Spark: To me education...

Muriel Spark: To me education...

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of...

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Willa Cather: Give the people...

Willa Cather: Give the people...

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

Source: On Writing,...

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Carson McCullers: Our hunger for...

Carson McCullers: Our hunger for...

Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us [Americans] almost like a national disease. Our literature...

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Katherine Anne Porter: You have to...

Katherine Anne Porter: You have to...

You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have...

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Willa Cather: To note an...

Willa Cather: To note an...

To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent.

Source: Not Under...

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Ursula Le Guin: I doubt that...

Ursula Le Guin: I doubt that...

I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an...

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Zelda Fitzgerald: Nobody has ever...

Zelda Fitzgerald: Nobody has ever...

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

Source:...

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Harper Lee: You're not gonna...

Harper Lee: You're not gonna...

You're not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't...

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Gloria Naylor: His entire life...

Gloria Naylor: His entire life...

His entire life was becoming a race against the natural -- and he was winning.

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Marguerite Yourcenar: I have never...

Marguerite Yourcenar: I have never...

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily.

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Edna O'Brien: There is something...

Edna O'Brien: There is something...

There is something about holding on to things that I find therapeutic.

Source: The...

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Mary McCarthy: The happy ending...

Mary McCarthy: The happy ending...

The happy ending is our national belief.

Source: On the Contrary, pt. 1, America...

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