Rita Mae Brown:

If there's good in life, I'm going to find it.

Rita Will, p. 420

Rita Mae Brown:

The differing forms of oppression -- sexism, racism, religious persecution or hating homosexuals -- are the same meat but different gravy.  Sadly, many people in these disparate groups don't understand how much they have in common with one another.  It's like a reverse snob game: Who is the most oppressed?  Hey, who cares?  Pain is pain.

Rita Will, p. 464

Rita Mae Brown:

It was odd, living in a place that held nothing of your own, but I learned that wherever my books and cats are, that's home.

Rita Will, p. 314

Rita Mae Brown:

The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality.  You're just a faggot.  Or whatever -- fill in the blank.  Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people.

Rita Will, p. 392

Rita Mae Brown:

You can't participate in any group of people, much less a family, if you aren't truthful.

Rita Will, p. 218

Rita Mae Brown:

A human being must learn at a very young age how to connect to other human beings.  Our technologies are driving us apart, only connecting us in terms of information, not in terms of emotions.

Rita Will, p. 138

Rita Mae Brown:

A community is weakened by any member's lying, for whatever reason.  You usually uncover the lie in a crisis, which makes it twice as bad.

Rita Will, p. 206

Rita Mae Brown:

I've done the best I could given my temperament, my talent, the pressures of daily life.  I don't think any of us can do more than that and there's always someone who will do it better.  Still, you soldier on.

Rita Will, p. xi

Rita Mae Brown:

Evil is born in loneliness and despair.  One of the cruelest punishments for a human being is to be separated from other human beings -- or to be told s/he is a lesser human being.

Rita Will, p. 471

Rita Mae Brown:

What does it say about a community if it rewards lying and punishes the truth?  This is the moral conundrum each gay person must face.  The time has come for all of us to face it.

Rita Will, p. 206

Rita Mae Brown:

Language is music, and few languages are capable of such wide cadence as our own.

Rita Will, p. 284

Rita Mae Brown:

Anyone can write one book.  Almost anyone.  Fewer people can write a novel, as fiction is difficult.  The true test is writing the second and then the third work of fiction.  By the time you fire off that third one, you're either a writer or you're not.  If you don't know it, everyone around you does.  A fiction writer lives or dies on the page.

Rita Will, p. 288

Rita Mae Brown:

We still haven't reached the point where we are sure we like self-confidence in a woman.  We'll accept violent self-centeredness, especially in beauty queens and movie stars; the more superficial they are the more we accept it.  But a truly self-confident woman, one who looks you straight in the eye and doesn't lower her eyes in a nonverbal (and cloying) nod to your superiority, if you are male, is unnerving.

Rita Will, p. 279

Rita Mae Brown:

I've learned I can't change anyone.  I can't overcome homophobia.  I can't overcome misunderstandings if the other people aren't willing to learn and reach out, too.  I can only forgive, hope for the best and keep going.

Rita Will, p. 420

Rita Mae Brown:

As much as our enemies hate being challenged, it makes them respect you even as they hate you.  No one respects a wuss.

Rita Will, p. 464

Rita Mae Brown:

Oppression works in such a way that it holds every person responsible for the acts of any wrongdoer of the oppressed group.

Rita Will, p. 454

Rita Mae Brown:

What I do love is having tea with a friend.  Because I want to know what people think and feel, I like intimate gatherings.  Teatime is my favorite time of day, the best time to see people.  Also, since I don't drink, having tea spares me the ordeal of dinner, where you run the risk of your dinner partner or partners bending their elbow and becoming increasingly less witty.  A few people become more witty with alcohol -- precious few.

Rita Will, p. 284

Rita Mae Brown:

Hateful people force me to examine why they are hateful.

Rita Will, p. 464

Rita Mae Brown:

You can't let people treat you like garbage.  If you do, they'll think you are.

Rita Will, p. 464

Rita Mae Brown:

Do I want to write a disaster movie or a testosterone saga?  If it would let me pay off the mortgage, I suppose I'd write one, but if I had to make a diet of it, I wouldn't do it.  That's not why I'm on earth.  I want to write about real people in real situations and I prefer the comic tradition.

Rita Will, p. 438