Rita Mae Brown Quotes (38 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Many sources attribute this quote to Brown without giving a specific reference to her writings. The earliest located is the following variation from p. 47 of Musgrave Landing: Musings on the Writing Life by Susan Musgrave (1994), which Musgrave quotes as "Rita Mae Brown's warning": "If you become the kind of writer who calls forth heated emotional states, be careful. There are a lot of unbalanced people out there. The statistics on insanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's got to be you."
Disputed

Rita Mae Brown Quotes about love

“The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.”

Rita Mae Brown

“Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.”

Rita Mae Brown

Source: Hiss of Death

“Loving's pretty easy. It's letting someone love you that's hard.”

Rita Mae Brown

Source: Riding Shotgun

“Every day you're alive and someone loves you is a miracle.”

Rita Mae Brown

“Women need to feel loved and men need to feel needed.”

Rita Mae Brown

Source: Riding Shotgun

“About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.”

Rita Mae Brown

Rita Mae Brown Quotes about people

“❝Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞”

Rita Mae Brown

“I mean, what do people talk about when they're married?" "Their kids, I guess." "Maybe that's all they have in common.”

Rita Mae Brown book Rubyfruit Jungle

Source: Rubyfruit Jungle

“It doesn't matter to me. We're still cousins in our own way. Blood's just something old people talk about to make you feel bad.”

Rita Mae Brown book Rubyfruit Jungle

Source: Rubyfruit Jungle

Rita Mae Brown Quotes

“One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.”

Rita Mae Brown

“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”

Rita Mae Brown

“I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it's harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off.”

Rita Mae Brown

Starting from Scratch (1989)
Context: I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it's harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off. Also, a comic vision is my natural world view, but I've grown up in spite of myself and I can pass the comic twist if it detracts from what the characters need. Yes, the life of a saint is hard.

“When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.”

Rita Mae Brown

“If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.”

Rita Mae Brown

“Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.”

Rita Mae Brown

“Unfortunately, Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Rita Mae Brown

Source: Sudden Death

“When God made man she was practicing.”

Rita Mae Brown

Source: Cat on the Scent

“I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.”

Rita Mae Brown

“Writers will happen in the best of families.”

Rita Mae Brown

“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.”

Rita Mae Brown

“If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.”

Rita Mae Brown

Sudden Death (1983)
Variant: "If the World Made Sense, Men Would Ride Sidesaddle" was the title of a 1993 one-man comedy by Ed Navis, performed at Wings Theatre, New York.
Variant: If the world were a logical place, then men would ride side-saddle.

“He unzipped his pants and his brains fell out.”

Rita Mae Brown book Venus Envy

Source: Venus Envy

“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.”

Rita Mae Brown

Variant: Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

“Don't hope more than you're willing to work.”

Rita Mae Brown

“He tried to drown his troubles but they knew how to swim.”

Rita Mae Brown

“Any woman whose I. Q. hovers above her body temperature must be a feminist.”

Rita Mae Brown

“If you're afraid to die, you're afraid to live. You can't have one without the other.”

Rita Mae Brown

“Two wrongs don't make a right.

No, but three will get you back on the freeway!”

Rita Mae Brown

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

Rita Mae Brown

Brown did include this quote in her book Sudden Death (Bantam Books, New York, 1983), p. 68, but it appears she was just paraphrasing a quote that had already been written elsewhere. The earliest known appearance of a similar quote is the "approval version" of the Narcotics Anonymous "Basic Text" released in November 1981, which included the quote "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." A PDF scan of the 1981 approval version can be found here http://www.nauca.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1981-11-Basic-Text-Approval-Form-White.pdf, with the quote appearing on p. 11 (p. 25 of the PDF), at the end of the fourth paragraph (which begins "We have a disease; progressive, incurable and fatal"). More in this article https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/ on Quote Investigator website. <br class="br">Misattributed

“I also think living in the country gives you faith. All you have to do is get up and look at the mountains and look at the other animals to realize that your problems are mostly made up or exacerbated by humans. But human life isn't necessarily life. There's so much more out there.”

Rita Mae Brown

Interview in OutSmart magazine https://web.archive.org/web/20080727021104/http://home.houston.rr.com/blase/Root%20Folder/ritamae.html (January 1998)

“Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish.”

Rita Mae Brown

Starting from Scratch (1989)

“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. Both sides/ideas are right.”

Rita Mae Brown

Starting from Scratch (1989)