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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!


Pearl Buck: I don't wait...

Pearl Buck: I don't wait...

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to...

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Annie Dillard: I don't know...

Annie Dillard: I don't know...

I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth,...

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Gertrude Stein: It is extraordinary...

Gertrude Stein: It is extraordinary...

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is...

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Gertrude Stein: What is the...

Gertrude Stein: What is the...

What is the answer? [Silence] In that case, what is the question?

Source: Her...

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Paule Marshall: Perhaps she was...

Paule Marshall: Perhaps she was...

Perhaps she was both child and woman,
darkness and light, past and present,
life and death -- all the...

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Elizabeth Bowen: Silences have a...

Elizabeth Bowen: Silences have a...

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

Source: The House in Paris,...

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Annie Dillard: Every book has...

Annie Dillard: Every book has...

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement...

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: If the study...

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: If the study...

If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those...

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Eudora Welty: What I do...

Eudora Welty: What I do...

What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not...

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Enid Bagnold: If a dog...

Enid Bagnold: If a dog...

If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your...

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Margaret Atwood: . . ....

Margaret Atwood: . . ....

. . . time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee. . . . I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the...

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Margaret Atwood: Gardening is not...

Margaret Atwood: Gardening is not...

Gardening is not a rational act.

Source: Bluebeard's Egg/ 1986
-- Margaret...

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Amy Tan: In America nobody...

Amy Tan: In America nobody...

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

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Amy Tan: If you can't...

Amy Tan: If you can't...

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

Source: In Words of Women...

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Shirley Jackson: It has long...

Shirley Jackson: It has long...

It has long been my belief that in times of great stress, such as a 4-day vacation, the thin veneer of family wears...

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Francoise Sagan: Jazz music is...

Francoise Sagan: Jazz music is...

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

Source: Dominique, in A...

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Emmuska Orczy: I sometimes wish...

Emmuska Orczy: I sometimes wish...

I sometimes wish you had not so many lofty virtues.... I assure you little sins are far less dangerous and...

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Lois McMaster Bujold: I am who...

Lois McMaster Bujold: I am who...

I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose?though not always what I pleased....

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Harper Lee: You never really...

Harper Lee: You never really...

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

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Margaret Drabble: Perhaps the rare...

Margaret Drabble: Perhaps the rare...

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being...

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