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.
Rita Mae BrownI don't believe in straight or gay. I really don't. I think we're all degrees of bisexual.
Rita Mae BrownCreative people do not belong in the university because the process is antithetical to the analytical process so necessary for proper scholarship.
Rita Mae BrownClass 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.
Rita Mae BrownI had to learn the image is not the word, which is a jolt for a literary soul. But it has served me well in terms of understanding plot, in terms of watching actors develop characters.
Rita Mae BrownWhat happens to children and families today who sit around the television? They're watching made-up stories. It's not their experience and it's not truly shared. A human being must learn at a very young age how to connect to other human beings. Our technologies are driving us apart, only connecting us in terms of information, not in terms of emotions.
Rita Mae BrownI became a lesbian because of women, because women are beautiful, strong, and compassionate.
Rita Mae BrownIf you're afraid to die, you're afraid to live. You can't have one without the other.
Rita Mae BrownI believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain.
Rita Mae BrownLanguage is decanted and shared. If only one person is left alive speaking a language - the case with some American Indian languages - the language is dead. Language takes two and their multiples.
Rita Mae BrownI write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan.
Rita Mae BrownMy lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there praying for a man, and I'm giving them my share.
Rita Mae BrownAunt 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.
Rita Mae BrownAll creatures tread across the rubble of ruined civilizations. The trick is to keep moving. No animal ever goes about dispensing shallow compassion.
Rita Mae BrownI'm beginning to feel that the real endangered species on planet earth are not the whales and the elephants but those of us who can laugh at the world and ourselves. ... I fear the dry turn of the American mind, this focus on the literal, as much as I fear our capacity for self-destruction. We've become hagridden by facts, obsessed with product instead of process. Where's the energetic wit, the looney outlook, the frivolity, the lightness of comforting laughter? It has become fashionable to know and unfashionable to feel, and you can't really laugh if you can't feel.
Rita Mae BrownI hate the telephone. I think the lowest circle of hell is reserved for Alexander Graham Bell.
Rita Mae BrownPeople 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.
Rita Mae BrownI think in the years to come what Reagan will be remembered for is that he had the chance to stop the plague and he chose not to because the 'right people' were dying.
Rita Mae BrownLanguage is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.
Rita Mae BrownI do think women avoid power. Power assumes responsibility and accountability, and I think many, many women want to have it both ways.
Rita Mae BrownMother believed in enjoying herself. Aunt Mimi believed in enjoying herself, then feeling guilty about it.
Rita Mae Brown