Top 248 Quotes & Sayings by Rita Mae Brown - Page 3

Whoever heard of a neurotic frog? Where do humans get off thinking they're the pinnacle of evolution?

One thing Mom taught me, "You're going to be dead a long time, so do it now!"

Do not judge. Never presume to judge another human being anyway. That's up to heaven.

all outcast peoples struggle to be recognized as individuals. The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality. You're just a faggot. Or whatever - fill in the blank. Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people.

compromise is the work of mature people.

The human animal dances wildest on the edge of the grave.

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

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.

Language 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.

Creative people do not belong in the university because the process is antithetical to the analytical process so necessary for proper scholarship.

Dying's not so bad. At least I won't have to answer the telephone.

The real reason Milton went blind was to avoid reading unsolicited manuscripts.

Novels, like human beings, usually have their beginnings in the dark.

Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through. Sport gives players an opportunity to know and test themselves. The great difference between sport and art is that sport, like a sonnet, forces beauty within its own system. Art, on the other hand, cyclically destroys boundaries and breaks free.

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

[A pariah is] something like a martyr with more suffering and less class.

Possession of a secret is no guarantee of its truth.

The only merciful thing about drug abuse is the speed with which it devastates you. Alcoholics can take decades to destroy themselves and everyone they touch. The drug addict can accomplish this in a year or two. Of course, suicide is even more efficient.

Mother love is the most powerful, the most irrational force on earth, even more powerful than sexual love. However, one does lead to the other, so best not to spurn the former.

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.

Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.

It's a big jump from smart to motherwit.

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.

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

In America the word revolutionary is used to sell pantyhose.

Familiarity breeds consent.

I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usually noble in some manner) but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict.

Where there is no faith, devils are a necessity.

Divorce: fission after fusion.

Knowing Latin and having two years of Attic Greek gave me the strong foundation upon which I've built a career. I think the classical training, more than anything, has provided me with longevity.

Aunt 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.

I believe that we often disguise pain through ritual and it may be the only solace we have.

It doesn't matter to me. We're still cousins in our own way. Blood's just something old people talk about to make you feel bad.

Today we live in a society suffering from ethical rickets.

In sports, as in love, one can never pretend.

I believe every change any word has undergone probably originated in ignorance.

I'm sorry that our country and the people do not consider the arts as vital to our well-being as, say, medicine. Suffering is unnecessary. It doesn't make you a better artist; it only makes you a hungry one. However, to me the acquisition of the craft of writing was worth any amount of suffering.

An army of lovers shall not fail.

Money and writing appear to be mutually exclusive.

... I distrust manifest knowledge.

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.

No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love

whoever said progress was a positive thing has never been to Florida or California.

Once you know what women are like, men get kind of boring. I'm not trying to put them down, I mean I like them sometimes as people, but sexually they're dull.

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.

Tennis is physical chess.

Content without style is propaganda or adolescence. Style without content is decadence.

In art as in politics we must deal with people as they are not as we wish them to be. Only by working with the real can you get closer to the ideal.

All decisions are made on insufficient evidence.

People aren't grapes - you can't weigh them in a bunch, but I guess it's easier than dealing with people as individuals.

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

Adjectives are the curse of America.

I believe in art that conceals art.

It really doesn't take brains to be a politician as much as it takes stomach. Both would be nice, but in America we have accepted diminishing returns in this arena.

I 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.

piety is like garlic: a little goes a long way.

While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, "Man", And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

You can love more than one person at a time, and I don't give a damn what the self-help books say.

I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.

The dead are the only people to have permanent dwellings.