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Elizabeth Gaskell: I'll not listen...

Elizabeth Gaskell: I'll not listen...

I'll not listen to reason. . . Reason always means what someone else has got to say.

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Patricia McKillip: I write fantasy...

Patricia McKillip: I write fantasy...

I write fantasy because it's there. I have no other excuse for sitting down for several hours a day indulging my...

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Ursula Le Guin: He arrived at...

Ursula Le Guin: He arrived at...

He arrived at ideas the slow way, never skating over the clear, hard ice of logic, nor soaring on the slipstreams of...

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Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: The great law...

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: The great law...

The great law of denial belongs to the powerful forces of life, whether the case be one of coolish baked beans, or an...

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Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: It is not...

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: It is not...

It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is the doing the little things, the common duties,...

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Amy Tan: Who knows where...

Amy Tan: Who knows where...

Who knows where inspiration comes from? Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the...

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Daisy Ashford: My life will...

Daisy Ashford: My life will...

My life will be sour grapes and ashes without you.

Source: The Young Visiters,...

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Judith Rossner: Identity is a...

Judith Rossner: Identity is a...

Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind...

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Margaret Truman: It's only when...

Margaret Truman: It's only when...

It's only when you grow up, and step back from him, or leave him for your own career and your own home it's only then...

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Madeleine L'Engle: Because I am...

Madeleine L'Engle: Because I am...

Because I am a storyteller I live by words. Perhaps music is a purer art form. It may be that when we communicate with...

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Ruth Benedict: No man ever...

Ruth Benedict: No man ever...

No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and...

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Ruth Benedict: In a world...

Ruth Benedict: In a world...

In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with...

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Joyce Brothers: Accept that all...

Joyce Brothers: Accept that all...

Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can -- and surely will at times -- fail. I think we should follow a...

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Annie Dillard: The body of...

Annie Dillard: The body of...

The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer...

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Agatha Christie: I don't think...

Agatha Christie: I don't think...

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention -- invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also...

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Katherine Paterson: Youth is a...

Katherine Paterson: Youth is a...

Youth is a mortal wound

Source: Jacob Have I Loved, 1980.
-- Katherine Paterson,...

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Mary Webb: It made me...

Mary Webb: It made me...

It made me gladsome to be getting some education, it being like a big window opening.

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Mary Renault: How can people...

Mary Renault: How can people...

How can people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown?

Source: The King Must...

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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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Harriet Beecher Stowe: When you get...

Harriet Beecher Stowe: When you get...

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a...

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