"What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit."
— John Updike

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

"Any woman who counts on her face is a fool."
— Zadie Smith (On Beauty)

"time is how you spend your love."
— Zadie Smith (On Beauty)

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
— Harvey Fierstein

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"Details of your incompetence do not interest me."
— Lauren Weisberger (The Devil Wears Prada)

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
— Albert Camus

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."
— Albert Camus

"I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."
— Albert Camus (The Stranger)

"For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life."
— Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere."
— Anne Lamott (Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.
"
— Toni Morrison

"Love is never any better than the lover. "
— Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye)

"You are your best thing"
— Toni Morrison (Beloved)

"True the Black woman did the housework, the drudgery; true, she reared the children, often alone, but she did all of that while occupying a place on the job market, a place her mate could not get or which his pride would not let him accept.And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself."
— Toni Morrison

"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
— Audre Lorde

"I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain."
— Audre Lorde

"But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women."
— Audre Lorde

"Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought."
— Audre Lorde

"...oppression is as American as apple pie... "
— Audre Lorde

"We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings."
— Audre Lorde

"see me now
your severed daughter
laughing our name into echo
all the world shall remember "
— Audre Lorde (The Black Unicorn: Poems)