Women Authors From The United States

"I'm the Vampire Lestat. Remember me? The vampire who became a super rock star, the one who wrote the autobiography? The one with the blond hair and the blue eyes, and the insatiable desire for visibility and fame? You remember. [first line]"

"In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art – the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases – beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden."

"To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner."

"Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past."

"I want to know, for example, why beauty exists," she [Gabrielle] said, "why nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power? Lestat calls it the Savage Garden, but for me that is not enough."

"The truth is most women are weak, be they mortal or immortal. But when they are strong, they are absolutely unpredictable."

"Good? What are you talking about, 'Good'?" "That it's good, that it does some good, that there is good in it! Dear God, even if there is no meaning in this world, surely there can still be goodness! It's good to eat, to drink, to laugh, to be together!"

"Your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. The myths of men are not your myths. Men’s treasures are not yours."

"People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult."

"God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms."

""I see . . ." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window. [first line]"

"I was so conflicted and disillusioned about organized religion that I couldn't write. … I think my writings will go on being the writings of a believer in Christ. I think I'll be less frustrated and freer to write about the full dimension of what that means. But I write metaphysical thrillers, and how this works out in fiction is always mysterious: characters confront dilemmas. The worldview of the novel is certainly optimistic and that of a believer. What character will say what, I don't know until I start writing. …. Because I had written Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, I had become a public Christian. I wanted my readers to know that I was stepping aside from organized religion and the names Christian and Christianity because I wanted to exonerate myself from the things organized religion was doing in the name of Jesus. Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love. They have become associated with hatred, persecution, attempting to abolish the separation of church and state, and trying to pressure people to vote certain ways in elections. I wanted to make it clear that I did not in any way remain complicit with those things."

"For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. … In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

"Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires ... How avant-garde!"

"Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open."

"The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone."

"When I was in my 20s, I was a bookworm — spent 12 hours of the day in the library. How I met George, I'll never know."

"Ann Curry: You know the American people are suffering watching -- Mrs. Bush: Believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm's way."

"I also want to encourage anyone who has been affected by hurricane Ka, uh, Karina..."

"Mrs. Bush: I don’t think there is anything wrong with singing it in Spanish. The point is it’s the United States national anthem and what people want is it to be sung in a way that respects the United States and our culture. At the same time, we are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of many, many languages, because immigrants come and bring their languages. Larry King: Is that an issue you disagree with your husband? He says it should be sung in English. Mrs. Bush: I think it should be sung in English, of course."

"All people need to know how AIDS is transmitted, and every country has an obligation to educate its citizens. This is why every country must also improve literacy, especially for women and girls, so that they can make wise choices that will keep them healthy and safe."

"Education is spreading hope. Millions are now learning to live with HIV/AIDS — instead of waiting to die from it."

"AIDS respects no national boundaries; spares no race or religion; devastates men and women, rich and poor. No country can ignore this crisis. Fighting AIDS is an urgent calling — because every life, in every land, has value and dignity."

"In contrast to my husband, I can pronounce the word nuclear."

"In almost every single way, George and I share the same values. And if we differ on some issues, it's very, very minor."

"We talk about issues, but I'm not his adviser, I'm his wife... I find that it's really best not to give your spouse a lot of advice. I don't want a lot of advice from him."

"I'm not wild about the term first lady. I'd just like to be called Laura Bush."

"A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning."

"Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library. … An investment in libraries is an investment in our children's future."

"("In February of 2003, the first lady had cancelled a White House poetry symposium honoring Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Laura Bush had feared the invited poets might invoke poems critical of invading Iraq. I asked Grace Paley for her response to Laura Bush’s action.") GP: Well, it was probably the most extraordinary event to happen to American poets, and Laura Bush did it. It couldn’t have happened, though, really, without — you know, when people say, “What can poets do?” I often say, “Just what any other working group could do to get anything accomplished, and that is to organize.”...So I owe — we — all poets owe a great deal to Laura Bush, Sam Hamill and the computer, because, as this happened, within about two days, there were about — I don’t know — 15,000 poets writing letters, writing, sending poems to Laura Bush, poems of protest."

"The White House has disinvited the poets/to a cultural tea in honor of poetry/after the Secret Service got wind of a plot/to fill Mrs. Bush’s ears with anti-war verse./Were they afraid the poets might persuade/a sensitive girl who always loved to read,/a librarian who stocked the shelves with Poe/and Dickinson? Or was she herself afraid/to be swayed by the cooing doves, and live at odds/with the screaming hawks in her family?/The Latina maids are putting away the cups/and the silver spoons, sad to be missing out/on música they seldom get to hear/in the hallowed halls. . . The valet sighs/as he rolls the carpets up and dusts the blinds./Damn but a little Langston would be good/in this dreary mausoleum of a place!/Why does the White House have to be so white?/The chef from Baton Rouge is starved for verse/uncensored by Homeland Security./NO POETRY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!/Instead the rooms are vacuumed and set up/for closed-door meetings planning an attack/against the ones who always bear the brunt/of silencing: the poor, the powerless,/the ones who serve, those bearing poems, not arms./So why be afraid of us, Mrs. Bush?/you’re married to a scarier fellow./We bring you tidings of great joy-/not only peace but poetry on earth."

"The Center is designed to be human in scale, because, like the White House, presidential libraries belong to all Americans. The people across our nation were the ones who inspired us every day. Here, we remember the heartbreak and the heroism of September 11th, and the bravery of those who answered the call to defend our country. We remember the volunteers of all ages and all walks of life who came to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. And we remember all the people who step forward to help others -- whether to teach a child to read, or to feed a hungry family."

"A presidential library is not just about one president; each library is about our nation and the world during that time. The George W. Bush Presidential Center reflects George’s role as the first president of the 21st century. Like our new era, the building and its grounds are designed to be forward-looking, and they’re green and sustainable. They celebrate the native environment of our home state of Texas. The archives housed here are completely digital. And the entire Bush Center is designed to present the past and engage the future. We welcome scholars, and students, and the community at large to gather here for generations to come."

"In the United States, the presidency is not just about one person. The presidency is about all of the people who join with that president in years of service to our remarkable nation. They are the people who never fly on Air Force One, but who put in countless late nights and earlier mornings, who spend less time with their family and friends and more time hard at work caring for our country. The presidency is about the men and women of our military who serve every president and who make the ultimate sacrifice to protect us and keep us safe. The stones in the walls represent your years of service."

"About truth I have always been monotheistic. It has been an article of faith with me, going back to college days, that there is a truth and that it is knowable."

"I absolutely adored Mary. I was transfixed by her. She was so beautiful, so witty, so much fun to talk to."

"Mary McCarthy was a rara avis, a rare bird: a truly sexy intellectual who was nonetheless more interested in truth than in being intellectually sexy or fashionable. … The real beauty of her life and work is that she was an explorer who never compromised her freedom or integrity. Her writing was symptomatic of this. It never quite became an end in itself, but remained, throughout her life, a means to articulating herself as "her own woman." In that she succeeded marvellously and it is the way in which she did it for which she deserves lasting respect and emulation."

"Our First Lady of letters."

"She was a great heroine to many young women of my age. She was a heroine for her independence and her courage in speaking out in defence of lost causes and for her ability to combine great personal glamour with a ferocious intelligence."

"Mary McCarthy was the cultural heroine of my generation. … I felt how different things were now when I watched Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt on television. It's very well done. Elizabeth McGovern is hip and smart in the central role. What's missing is the importance the story had when it first appeared. In the 1940s it was wonderfully giddy and daring. It was tonic. It was the story that bright people — women especially — talked about and identified with. This was a feminist heroine who was strong and foolish; it was before feminist writing got bogged down in victimization. She was asinine but she wasn't weak. I looked at the reviews of the television production and the people writing about it didn’t seem to get it at all. It was just a story."

"Intellectual responses are known as opinions and Mary had them and had them. Still she was so little of an ideologue as to be sometimes unsettling in her refusal of tribal reaction — left or right, male or female, that sort of thing. She was doggedly personal and often this meant being so aslant that there was, in this determined rationalist, an endearing crankiness, very American and homespun somehow."

"How guilty should I feel? The lawsuit crippled McCarthy financially and wrecked her health. Is there a term in law for something that doesn’t directly cause a crime—those few little words of mine on the air—which, omitted, would have prevented it? I’m deeply sorry that I never spoke to McCarthy again. Could we have had dinner and enjoyed a grim laugh? Might she have said, "Don’t blame yourself. I was hellbent on doing the Hellman thing"? Ephron, in her play, suggests that McCarthy had the whole thing planned. I don’t really think she did, though. Maybe that’s why I felt sorrier for her than for Old Scaly Bird. Scariest thought: Is it possible that I was set up? Used, by the two titans, to provide publicity for their fading careers? (I was, at the time, working more than they were.)"

"The play centers on an incident that occurred on my old PBS show, in 1979. I always enjoyed having McCarthy as a guest. She was lively, witty, opinionated, and striking on camera. And there was her smile, hilariously immortalized by Randall Jarrell, in Pictures from an Institution: "Torn animals were removed at sunset from that smile.""

"One writer whom the circle could not intimidate in any way was Mary McCarthy … I see her indeed in the image of a Valkyrie maiden, riding her steed into the circle, amid thunder and lightning, and out again, bearing the body of some dead hero across her saddle — herself unscathed and headed promptly for her typewriter."

"I was able to compare the sexual equipment of the various men I made love with and there were amazing differences, in both length and massiveness. One handsome married man, who used to arrive with two Danishes from a very good bakery, had a penis about the size and shape of a lead pencil; he shall remain nameless. In my experience there was usually a relation to height, as Philip Rahv and Bill Mangold, both tall men, bore out. There may be dwarfish men with monstrously large organs, but I have never known one. It was not until later, after my second divorce, that I met an impotent man or a pervert (two of the latter)... None of my partners, the reader will be relieved to hear, had a venereal disease."

"It was getting rather alarming. I realised one day that in twenty four hours I had slept with three different men. And one morning I was in bed with somebody while over his head I talked on the telephone with somebody else…I did not feel promiscuous. Maybe no-one does. And maybe more girls sleep with more men than you would ever think to look at them."

"Of all the men I slept with in my studio-bed on Gay Street (and there were a lot: I stopped counting) I liked Bill Mangold the best. Until I began to see Philip Rahv."

"Every year I started Ulysses, but I could not get beyond the first chapter — "stately, plump Buck Mulligan" — page 47, I think it was. Then one day, long after, in a different apartment, with a different man (which?), I found myself on page 48 and never looked back. This happened with many of us: Ulysses gradually — but with an effect of suddenness — became accessible. It was because in the interim we had been reading diluted Joyce in writers like Faulkner and so had got used to his ways, at second remove."

"To marry a man without loving him, which was what I had just done, not really perceiving it, was a wicked action, I saw. Stiff with remorse and terror, I lay under the thin blanket through a good part of the night; as far as I could tell from what seemed a measureless distance, my untroubled mate was sleeping."

"A good deal of education consists of unlearning — the breaking of bad habits, as with a tennis serve. This was emphatically true of a Vassar education: where other colleges aimed at development, bringing out what was already there like a seed waiting to sprout, Vassar remade a girl. Vassar was transformational."