Women Authors From The United States

"For both of my parents, it was very clear to them we were going to identify as Black — in a city as racist as Boston, in a country as racist as America, that the identity in us that needed protecting and shoring up was our Black identity. It wasn’t the white side of us."

"...To grapple with race is not at odds or separate from the craft of writing fiction."

"I think all serious artists at some point waver in their self-belief. But you also have to have those moments when you are deluded enough to believe that some crazy thing will work out. Even if it means returning to what you intended to do to begin with."

"I use the word mulatto a lot in my work, and I have sort of rejected the more politically correct term of "biracial" or "multiracial," mainly because it's meaningless and vague, and it could describe any two or three mixes that one could be. But mulatto — as problematic as the word is, and it comes out of slavery and the sort of pseudoscientific ideas of race, as problematic as it is — it's the only word that really describes this very specific experience of being Black and white and being that mixture in America, which is, singular, and I think an important distinction from the other mixes."

"I think it’s always true for every writer that your debut novel stands on its own, but your second novel is always seen in relation to what came before."

"I wrote a pilot for a show that was based on my work. I wrote an original pilot for a limited series that is still out there being shopped around. … What I felt writing scripts is, I really like it. It's very interesting and sort of technical-feeling compared to writing novels. And I will continue to do it because it's a nice break between books, and it kind of can pay … to get a new stove in your kitchen, like there's actual financial benefits to doing it. But I think my soul is in the page and in writing novels. Being in control of the entire universe that I'm writing is really what feeds me on a much deeper level. And so I will never kind of fully abandon the written word. It just feeds me in a whole other way, but unfortunately doesn't literally feed me or my children."

"Since the men from a party or fear of a frown, Are kept by a sugar-plum quietly down, Supinely asleep—and depriv'd of their sight, Are stipp'd of their freedom, and robb'd of their right; If the sons, so degenerate! the blessings despise, Let the Daughters of Liberty nobly arise; And though we've no voice but a negative here, The use of the taxables, let us forbear:— (Then merchants import till your stores are all full, May the buyers be few, and your traffic be dull!) Stand firmly resolv'd, and bid Grenville to see, That rather than freedom we part with our tea."

"Then for the sake of Freedom’s name, (Since British wisdom scorns repealing) Come sacrifice to Patriot fame, And give up tea by way of healing."

"She believed that the power of women working together could promote positive change."

"Suffragist, educator, visionary, public official, innovator, and groundbreaker."

"Although not as well-known as other famous American women, Dr. Blanton left a formidable legacy by improving the plight of women and children. Tenacious, persistent, and determined are words that aptly describe her."

"Everything that helps to wear away age-old prejudices contributes towards the advancement of women and of humanity."

"Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps To greet their offspring, terrible from camps."

"Wifehood, the house, a family; they are woman’s traditional concern and each in its way represents one of the other great three—faith, hope, charity—which St. Paul sets down as the virtues of earth. (For how can one rear a family without faith? Or build a roof without hope? Or remain a proper wife without charity?) They are life’s vital elements and no ordered world can endure without them."

"What's a Cinderella 10? A woman who sucks and fucks till midnight and then turns into a pizza and a six-pack."

"A mother's hardest to forgive. Life is the fruit she longs to hand you Ripe on a plate. And while you live, Relentlessly she understands you."

"The kitchen will not come into its own again until it ceases to be a status symbol and becomes again a workshop. It may be pastel. It may be ginghamed as to curtains and shining with copper like a picture in a woman's magazine. But you and I will know it chiefly by its fragrances and its clutter. At the back of the stove will sit a soup kettle, gently bubbling, one into which every day are popped leftover bones and vegetables to make stock for sauces or soup for the family. Carrots and leeks will sprawl on counters, greens in a basket. There will be something sweet-smelling twirling in a bowl and something savory baking in the oven. Cabinet doors will gape ajar and colored surfaces are likely to be littered with salt and pepper and flour and herbs and cheesecloth and pot holders and long-handled forks. It won't be neat. It won't even look efficient. but when you enter it you will feel the pulse of life throbbing from every corner. The heart of the home will have begun once again to beat."

"Housewives more than any other race deserve well-furnished minds. They have to live in them such a lot of the time. ... We who belong to that profession hold the fate of the world in our hands."

"I’ll read as I please—a spot of science fiction, a taste of Jane Austen. Mark Twain and Keats and Agatha Christie shall sit cheek by jowl on my night table. And I’ll make it a point of honor to finish no book I’m not enjoying, also to skip as much and as often as I like. If I want to peek to see how a novel comes out, I’ll feel perfectly justified. I’ll go to Plato when I’m in the mood and the newest thriller when I’m not. For again, the little vices bring relaxation; and a bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides that necessary roughage in the literary diet."

"Men may be allowed romanticism; women, who can create life in their own bodies, dare not indulge in it."

"The other day I chanced to meet An angry man upon the street— A man of wrath, a man of war, A man who truculently bore Over his shoulder, like a lance, A banner labeled "Tolerance.""

"Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but passé. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick."

"Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same."

"God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul."

"Compromise? Of course we compromise. But compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy and Spruce Manor the pleasant place it is."

"Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction’s roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever, And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind."

"Ah! some love Paris, And some, Purdue. But love is an archer with a low I.Q. A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity. So I'm in love with New York City."

"Always on Monday morning the Press reports God as revealed to His vicars in various guises— Benevolent, stormy, patient, or out of sorts. But only God knows which God God recognizes."

"Prince, I warn you, under the rose, Time is the thief you cannot banish. These are my daughters, I suppose. But where in the world did the children vanish?"

"In or about the year before Christ 606, , the great city, was destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor, her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters; army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came at last. The nations assembled and encompassed her around. Popular tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender, thus saved himself, his treasures and his capital from the shame of bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been."

"That the nation of , which the biblical table of nations (Gen. x. 22) places second among ’s own children, was of purely Semitic race, has never been doubted. The striking likeness of the n to the type of face would almost alone have sufficed to establish the relationship, even were not the two languages so very nearly akin. But the kinship goes deeper than that, and asserts itself in certain spiritual tendencies, which find their expression in the national religion, or, more correctly, in the one essential modificationintroduced by the Assyrians into the , which they otherwise adopted wholesale, just as they brought it from their Southern home. Like their Hebrew brethren, they arrived at the perception of the Divine Unity; but while the wise men of the Hebrews took their stand uncompromisingly on monotheism and imposed it on their reluctant followers with a fervor and energy that no resistance or backsliding could abate, the Assyrian priests thought to reconcile the truth, which they but imperfectly grasped, with the old traditions and the established religious system. They retained the entire Babylonian pantheon, with all its theory of successive emanations, its two great triads, its five planetary deities, and the host of inferior divinities, but, at the head of them all, and above them all, they placed the one God and Master whom they recognized as supreme. They did not leave him wrapped in uncertainty and lost in misty remoteness, but gave him a very distinct individuality and a personal name: they called him ..."

"It was in the year 641 that the Arab invaders, in the heyday of their fervor for the faith of which their prophet Mohammed had taught them to consider themselves the heaven-sent bearers, won the battle, (on the field of }}, fifty miles from ancient ), which changed the destinies of , and turned its people, dreaded and victorious for four centuries under their last national kings, the dynasty}}, into a conquered, enslaved, and for a long time ruthlessly oppressed and ill-treated population. III.}}, the last Sassanian king, was murdered on his flight, for plunder, and no effort was made to retrieve the lost fortunes of that terrible day, with which closed an heroic struggle of over eight years; the country’s energies were broken."

"The serpent tribe is perhaps more numerous in India than in any other country, and the most poisonous varieties seem to have congregated there. The openness of the dwellings imperatively demanded by the climate, and the vast numbers of people sleeping in the open air, in groves, forests, gardens, etc. give them chances of which they make but too good use, swarming in the gardens and seeking shelter in the houses during the rainy season. As a consequence, death from snake-bite almost equals an epidemic. In ... 1877, 16,777 human victims perished by this means, although £811 reward were paid for the destruction of 127,295 snakes, while in 1882, 19,519 person were reported to have been killed by snakes as compared with 2606 by tigers, leopards, wolves, and all other wild beasts together. That year £1487 were paid in rewards for the destruction of 322,421 venomous reptiles."

"Interest was heightened by the knowledge that the 162,000 acres of land already cultivated in the , where is located, were to triple through a great irrigation project inaugurated by . In 1930 it was well under way when the project was abandoned. An American engineer, Charles W. Sutton, long in the service of Peru, was adding to his fame and usefulness by undertaking to bring from the Huancabamba River, tributary to the Amazon, by means of a tunnel through the mountains, water to supplement the service of the coastal streams."

"... this woman, now nearly sixty, with graying hair and steel-rimmed glasses, was a monster of persistence. She was determined to become the first known human to ascend the summit of the forbidding , which she hoped would prove to be the highest in the , the "apex of America." And so she went on to reach Huascarán's summit on her sixth onslaught. Her achievement was heralded by ' as "one of the most remarkable feats in the history of mountain-climbing." Upon her death at eighty-four, the ' called her the most famous of all women mountain climbers."

"After years of climbing, she made New Hampshire’s her final ascent in 1932. She was 82 years old. On her gravestone in is written: “You have brought uncommon glory to women of all time.”"

"(1st edition 1913)"

"Dr. Jacobi died in 1906. In recognition of her manifold services to humanity, a memorial meeting was held shortly after, at which tributes were paid to her memory by Dr. , Dr. , , Mrs. , Dr. , Dr. , Dr. , and Sara King Wiley."

"... The conquest in 1895 of the grand old , and the unmerited notoriety attained thereby, spurred me on to the accomplishment of some deed which should render me worthy of the fame already acquired. The most feasible project seemed to be the ascent of in Mexico, its summit the highest point which had been reached in North America. This became, under the auspices of the ', in 1897, the easy goal of my ambition and gave me temporarily the world's record for women."

"Fortunate the traveler, who, 7 or 8 miles below Las Cuevas, has at the head of a side valley at the north a glimpse of colossal ' 15 miles away, a long ridge of snow arching into two domes, with a sheer drop of 10,000 feet on its black southern wall; and farther on a sight of ', 30 miles away at the south: both mountains first climbed in 1897 by the , though he unfortunately was compelled by to forego the satisfaction of attaining either summit himself. The first to reach the supposed apex of the , the top of Aconcagua, according to the latest measurement, 22,817 feet, was , the celebrated Swiss guide, who in almost every land has led English and Americans to the summits of noted mountains. Alone, January 14, 1897, he gained this height, and there erected a stone man as is the custom where possible. In April of the same year, the first ascent of Tupungato, 21,451 feet, was made also by Zurbriggen, and the Englishman, Vines."

"Over the waiting congregation rolled the burdened tones of the great , and the sweet voices of the boy-choristers alternated with the monotonous chanting of the s. Three times through the s defiled the long procession, with the sacred images, and the , and the bags of money for the poor. The donned his wealthiest robes in acknowledgment of the presence of the ; the more stately s paraded their purple coats and their gold-studded canes, and quickened the circulation of the inquisitive crowd stopping to gaze at the crimson dais. Finally a great hush breathed into the room of the music and the chanting; a thousand eyes turned toward the pulpit that faced the oaken , and—as if evoked by the spell of their expectancy—the preacher arose in his place and announced his theme."

"The modern position of women was inaugurated by the . The overthrew the doctrine of the . The dissolved the doctrine of the necessary and lawful supremacy of es. The Revolution of 1848 asserted the of the individual."

"A predominantly masculine type to the external genitals, and even the presence of s, is compatible with a feminine habitus of body or with entirely feminine feelings and instincts, or with both. Thus was brought up as a girl until the age of 22, when she was pronounced a male by a court of law because possessed of a complete male genital apparatus—, though small and ; with a testicle in the right lobe, the left testicle resting in the and apparently in fatty degeneration; distended by sperm, which, however, contained no spermatozoids; rudimentary . The misinterpretation of sex had been due to presence of a central cleft in the scrotum, simulating a and terminating in a cul-de-sac six and a half centimetres deep. The rectification of this mistake filled the subject with such despair that he committed suicide."

"The hills of one's youth are all mountains."

"The honor of the people lies in the moccasin tracks of the women."

"Kaye’s stellar professional music career began with the sounds of jazz and big band before becoming one of the most sought-after pop/rock session bassists and guitarists, beginning in the late 1950s. During a career that covered over a half-century, Kaye’s bass work was featured alongside music giants like Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, and Quincy Jones. A long-time teacher of the electric bass, Kaye played on Nancy Sinatra’s classic "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and contributed to the famed Mission: Impossible theme. How's that for a legacy?"

"Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them!"

"Bart [burning books]: So long, Johnny Tremain. Your Newberry award won't save you now!"

"I was a white man and turning yellow when—she came."

"Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed."