Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't have a medicine cabinet.
I love libraries, as anyone who has a brain does.
I loved the 'Three Stooges.' I still do - nyuk, nyuk.
Women have a real talent for bearing up under hard times.
I have always believed in helping people whose work I admire.
I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.
When I lived alone in Chicago, I had a lot of loneliness issues.
Writing was always a release for me, a great joy. It wasn't work.
I think conflict is one of the things that makes for a good story.
Oftentimes, I need to write about something in order to understand it.
We're such imperfect beings. I think that's more often the case than not.
Elvis is symbolic of a lot of things, dreams coming true being one of them.
I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book.
Whenever I write a novel, most of the time it starts with barest slip of an idea.
If I don't feel like writing on a certain day, I just go to the cafe and hang around.
Life is so fragile, so brief. And we seemingly work so hard at trying to ignore that.
When I write a book, I don't have an idea of what I'm doing. I just go where it leads.
I've been to Iowa many times before. You have to love Iowa, or you're not an American.
I can't decide if I'm a hippie or elegant older woman, a farmer's wife, a crazy person.
You are born into your family and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.
For me as a writer, it's so joyful to know that someone hears and responds to what I write.
If I'm on the road for Random House, I'm presenting a book with the hope people will buy it.
When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen.
I find life a mix of humor and pathos, and all my books reflect that to one degree or another.
If I could say anything to aspiring writers, it's to keep your own counsel, first and foremost.
Ruth has friends like other people have wardrobes. I mean that there's someone for every occasion.
If there were a category in the Olympics for laundry, my mother would have been a gold-medal winner.
I think Chicago is the best city in the country, hands down, but I don't like the winter there anymore.
I don't really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don't know how I write.
Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul.
The world of literature is so rich and so enriching. The value is inestimable of what reading does for you.
Really, my sacred place is my study where there are books that I love and things that people have given me.
I do think that there's an art form to parenting, and I have nothing but admiration for those who do it well.
As for my 'real life,' yes, I do have friends who are different from me, and I find it refreshing being around them.
It is true that all mothers do things differently from their own mothers, but they don't necessarily do them better.
Traditions insist upon themselves. Look around, and you will see them trying to exist everywhere, in everyone's life.
I have not been in a book club where there were any men, and I have not, in fact, heard of book groups that were mixed.
I got married at twenty-five and had children right away, so I didn't have the worry that I would never get to have children.
No, I am not my mother. I am deeply, endlessly grateful for what she did and who she was, but I am a different kind of person.
You should not pay too much attention to what anyone tells you, including me. It's very, very important to follow your own map.
I love to listen to people talk, especially when they're being really honest and they're not trying to sound any particular way.
My mother and her five sisters have always been living examples of the great love that can exist among sisters - and in a large family.
It usually takes about a year to write each book. I don't plan it that way. I don't set deadlines. If a book wants to take longer, it can.
My mom used to keep all her Christmas cards in a basket bedecked with red ribbon, and I loved to look at them all and read all the letters.
Nurses don't get paid very much. It didn't take long to realize that I could make more as a writer. I loved nursing, but I loved writing more.
I think titles are extremely important for novels: They can set the tone, tip you off, serve as shorthand for what the essential contents are.
Writing is, of course, a solitary occupation. But for many writers, myself included, it's through writing that we make certain vital connections.
As for the notion that everything has already been said, maybe it has, but life is like meatloaf: there are so many different ways to present it.
I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.
I remember, as a child, wanting all the time to buy my parents presents. I stood around forlornly in fancy shops, unable to afford a single thing.