"We all want to leave our children the Garden of Eden and we wind up giving them hardscrabble."
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Quote collection
Rita Mae Brown quotes (page 11 of 13)
242 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"Guilt is a Jewish invention improved upon by Christians for the last two thousand years."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"I have always been suspicious of romantic love. It looks too much like a narcissism shared by two."
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"Don't hope more than you're willing to work."
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"Book tours are like boot camp but with little sleep and less food."
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"Golf is an expensive way to make yourself miserable."
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"The only good thing ever done by a committee was the King James version."
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"If Michaelangelo were a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller."
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"Trouble is said to be good for an artist's soul but almost never is."
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"Armies are dependent on youthful male ignorance."
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"Monogamy is contrary to nature but necessary for the greater social good."
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"English is weak in describing emotional states or intensities of interpersonal relationships."
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"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."
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"I think of birth as the search for a larger apartment."
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"A narcissism shared by two."
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"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."
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