"Life matters more than any painting, novel, film, or great big diamond."
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Quote collection
Rita Mae Brown quotes (page 8 of 13)
242 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I believe our concept of romantic love is irrational, impossible to fulfill and the cause of many broken homes. No human being can maintain that rarefied atmosphere of 'true love'."
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"I used to think romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme foolishness. I no longer think that. There's nothing foolish in loving anyone. Thinking you'll be loved in return is what's foolish."
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"One thing Mom taught me, "You're going to be dead a long time, so do it now!""
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"I write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan."
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"compromise is the work of mature people."
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"Dying's not so bad. At least I won't have to answer the telephone."
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"I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usually noble in some manner) but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict."
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"To love without role, without power plays, is revolution."
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"Do not judge. Never presume to judge another human being anyway. That's up to heaven."
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"Novels, like human beings, usually have their beginnings in the dark."
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"It really doesn't take brains to be a politician as much as it takes stomach. Both would be nice, but in America we have accepted diminishing returns in this arena."
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"Adjectives are the curse of America."
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"In art as in politics we must deal with people as they are not as we wish them to be. Only by working with the real can you get closer to the ideal."
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"Tennis is physical chess."
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"I'm sorry that our country and the people do not consider the arts as vital to our well-being as, say, medicine. Suffering is unnecessary. It doesn't make you a better artist; it only makes you a hungry one. However, to me the acquisition of the craft of writing was worth any amount of suffering."
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"piety is like garlic: a little goes a long way."
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"Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through. Sport gives players an opportunity to know and test themselves. The great difference between sport and art is that sport, like a sonnet, forces beauty within its own system. Art, on the other hand, cyclically destroys boundaries and breaks free."
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"When the corpses are cleared no new order will emerge. Power, society, relationships, will descend in all their confusion on a new generation. The old, who started this conflagration, will retreat, worn out, the survivors and the young will continue the dance."
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"Language is decanted and shared. If only one person is left alive speaking a language - the case with some American Indian languages - the language is dead. Language takes two and their multiples."
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