Rita Mae Brown Quotes

Never underestimate the power of self-absorption, including your parents' self-absorption.

Writers are the moral purifiers of the culture. We may not be pure ourselves but we must tell the truth, which is a purifying act.

Anyone of my generation who trusts government probably has an I.Q. that would make a good golf score.

Gambling operates under the premise that greed can be satisfied by luck.

I don't think there is a 'gay lifestyle.' I think that's superficial crap, all that talk about gay culture. A couple of restaurants on Castro Street and a couple of magazines do not constitute culture. Michelangelo is culture. Virginia Woolf is culture. So let's don't confuse our terms. Wearing earrings is not culture.

We have the ability to be the Athens of modern times as opposed to the militaristic Sparta. I remind you that the Athenians wrote poetry. The Spartans did not.

Pain isn't always the enemy.

Humor comes from self-confidence.

Never, ever underestimate your readers. Everything you do registers.

I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss.

Computer dating? It's terrific if you're a computer!

many lesbians were so far in the closet they were in danger of being mistaken for garment bags.

I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it's harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off. Also, a comic vision is my natural world view, but I've grown up in spite of myself and I can pass the comic twist if it detracts from what the characters need. Yes, the life of a saint is hard.

When the corpses are cleared no new order will emerge. Power, society, relationships, will descend in all their confusion on a new generation. The old, who started this conflagration, will retreat, worn out, the survivors and the young will continue the dance.

Consider the "new" woman. She's trying to be Pollyanna Borgia, clearly a conflict of interest. She's supposed to be a ruthless winner at work and a bundle of nurturing sweetness at home.

As a woman, I find it very embarrassing to be in a meeting and realize I'm the only one in the room with balls.

I think of birth as the search for a larger apartment.

Book tours are like boot camp but with little sleep and less food.

Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.

A controller doesn't trust his/her ability to live through the pain and chaos of life. There is no life without pain just as there is no art without submitting to chaos.

We all want to leave our children the Garden of Eden and we wind up giving them hardscrabble.

Women who love women are Lesbians. Men, because they can only think of women in sexual terms, define Lesbian as sex between women.

Every day you're alive and someone loves you is a miracle.

You're nothing in America if you don't have debt.

The process of writing, any form of creativity, is a power intensifying life.

If Michaelangelo were a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.

Not until my middle thirties did I consider myself a novelist.

Oppression works in such a way that it holds every person responsible for the acts of any wrongdoer of the oppressed group.

the reason for revolution is so the good things in life circulate.

Loving's pretty easy. It's letting someone love you that's hard.

Recognition of function always precedes recognition of being.

Never hope for it more than you work for it.

It's still easier to take a blow from outside than it is to be disgusted with myself for not taking a stand. I don't know how people can live and not fight back but apparently millions do. They must hate themselves.

I believe our concept of romantic love is irrational, impossible to fulfill and the cause of many broken homes. No human being can maintain that rarefied atmosphere of 'true love'.

There's a thin line between collectivity and chaos.

Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual.

I don't want to die. I think death is a greatly overrated experience.

Whenever I doubt the existence of God or the Goddess, I look at horses. Only God could have made a horse.

If critics want to help me, let them come sit next to me while I'm writing.

The writer's job is not to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here I am,” but to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here YOU are.

sex has never been private and it never will be. We perform the act in private but we must be public about the connection. Sex is how we pass down worldly goods. It's how we create the primary unit of our society, the couple. ... This rule applies to gay people as well as straight people. ... The community absolutely must know who is straight, who is gay, who is married, and who is single. Without that information we make painful mistakes and lose time.

When Mother died I was both freed and abandoned, as are we all at this profound juncture in our lives.

We animals live life in all its glorious uncertainty. Why do politicians think they can control events?

Sex is a pleasurable exercise in plumbing, but be careful or you'll get yeast in your drain tap.

Golf is an expensive way to make yourself miserable.

Computer dating is fine, if you're a computer.

Youth moves out, leaving no forwarding address. No matter how you try, you can't reach that person again or that place.

A narcissism shared by two.