Top 248 Quotes & Sayings by Rita Mae Brown - Page 4

The only people are those who don't love anybody.

Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it. ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character. ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses.

It's an act of faith to be a writer in a postliterate world.

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.

There's a thin line between collectivity and chaos.

Unfortunately, Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

Lesbianism, politically organized, is the greatest threat that exists to male supremacy.

What's the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going to look and act like an imitation man?

A narcissism shared by two.

I don't expect executives to be creative but I do expect them to have courage.

Dad could charm a dog off a meat wagon.

Never measure literature by accounting statistics. A quarter of working authors earn less than $1,000.

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

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

Death is a greatly overrated experience. I hated Mother's and I'm not looking forward to my own. Apart from the sorrow there are the bills to be paid. Nobody dies for free.

Never let money control you. I'd rather see someone spend every red cent and relish his/her life than scrimp, obsess, and pinch the pennies. There's something repugnant about a person who centers his life around money.

Oh well, maybe the only beauty left in cities is in the oil slicks on the road and maybe there isn't any beauty left in the people who live in these places.

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

Alcohol is an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind.

Gossip is irresponsible communication. Irresponsible because it is at the expense of another person who is not there to defend herself. Irresponsible because it is not constructive: it helps no one, least of all the person being gossiped about.

Dean: Don't you find that somewhat of an aberration? Doesn't this disturb you my dear? After all, it's not normal. Molly: I know it's not normal for people in this world to be happy, and I'm happy.

He tried to drown his troubles but they knew how to swim.

I 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.

I hate the telephone. I think the lowest circle of hell is reserved for Alexander Graham Bell.

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.

As for loving woman, I have never understood why some people had a fit. I still don't. It seems fine to me. If an individual is productive responsible, and energetic, why should her choice in a partner make such a fuss? The government is only too happy to take my tax money and yet they uphold legislation that keeps me a second class citizen. Surely, there should be a tax break for those of us who are robbed of full and equal participation and protection in the life of our nation.

I have always been suspicious of romantic love. It looks too much like a narcissism shared by two.

Seriousness is the refuge of the shallow. There are events and personal experiences that call forth seriousness but they are fewer than most of us think.

I'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.

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

Never let anyone or any social attitude stand in the way of your productivity.

Gossip is irresponsible communication.

I believe all literature started as gossip.

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

Would it upset men if they found out we weren't different? Are we? Aren't we? Damned if I know.

Tennis, imprisoned within fixed boundaries, a patch of an acre, a green rectangle, tries the human soul. A tennis court is like a coffin, only larger.

English is weak in describing emotional states or intensities of interpersonal relationships.

Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish.

The only good thing ever done by a committee was the King James version.

There are more differences between poor people than between middle-class people.

Golf is an expensive way to make yourself miserable.

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.

England is an aquarium, not a nation.

The last thing I have to say is that ice is the past tense of water. I've always wanted to write that sentence and now I have.

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

Monogamy is contrary to nature but necessary for the greater social good.

Don't hope more than you're willing to work.

Armies are dependent on youthful male ignorance.

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

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

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

Trouble is said to be good for an artist's soul but almost never is.

Never hope for it more than you work for it.

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

Guilt is a Jewish invention improved upon by Christians for the last two thousand years.

Why marry a woman if you're going to betray her, and if you're going to betray her, why beat her? The fault is not hers ... I sometimes think the worst we do, we do behind closed doors.

Put your money in your head, that way no one can take it from you.

Mother believed in enjoying herself. Aunt Mimi believed in enjoying herself, then feeling guilty about it.

Two wrongs don't make a right. No, but three will get you back on the freeway!

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