Rita Mae Brown
Rita Mae Brown is a prolific American writer, most known for her mysteries and other novels (Rubyfruit Jungle). She is also an Emmy-nominated screenwriter.
Brown was born illegitimate in Hanover, Pennsylvania. She was raised by her biological mother's female cousin and the cousin's husband in York, Pennsylvania and later in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Starting in the fall of 1962, Brown attended the University of Florida at Gainesville on a scholarship. In the spring of 1964, the administrators of the racially segregated university expelled her for participating in the civil rights movement. She subsequently enrolled at Broward Community College[3] with the hope of transferring eventually to a more tolerant four-year institution.
Between fall 1964 and 1969, she lived in New York City, sometimes homeless, while attending New York University[6] where she received a degree in Classics and English. Later,[when?] she received another degree in cinematography from the New York School of Visual Arts.[citation needed] Brown received a Ph.D. in literature from Union Institute & University in 1976 and holds a doctorate in political science from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
Starting in 1973, Brown lived in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. In 1977, she bought a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia where she still lives.[9] In 1982, a screenplay Brown wrote while living in Los Angeles, Sleepless Nights, was retitled The Slumber Party Massacre and given a limited release theatrically.
During Brown's spring 1964 semester at the University of Florida at Gainesville, she became active in the American Civil Rights Movement. Later in the 1960s, she participated in the anti-war movement, the feminist movement and the Gay Liberation movement.
Brown took an administrative position with the fledgling National Organization for Women, but resigned in January 1970 over Betty Friedan's anti-gay remarks and NOW's attempts to distance itself from lesbian organizations. She claims she played a leading role in the "Lavender Menace" zap of the Second Congress to Unite Women on May 1, 1970, which protested Friedan's remarks and the exclusion of lesbians from the women's movement.
In the early 1970s, she became a founding member of The Furies Collective, a lesbian feminist newspaper collective in Washington, DC, which held that heterosexuality was the root of all oppression.
Brown told Time magazine in 2008, "I don't believe in straight or gay. I really don't. I think we're all degrees of bisexual. There may be a few people on the extreme if it's a bell curve who really truly are gay or really truly are straight. Because nobody had ever said these things and used their real name, I suddenly became [in the late 1970s] the only lesbian in America."
“High heels were invented by a woman who had once been kissed on the forehead.”
“My tombstone is going to say: 'Born: Yes. Died: Yes.”
“Whenever a young thing wants to be free minus serious thought, she gets pregnant and then gets married. Voilà!”
“I'm not an addictive personality, I just like getting high, that's all.”
“Do you think it's possible that love multiples? We're taught to think it divides. There's only so much to go around, like diamonds. It multiples.”
“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.”
“I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss.”
“A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.”
“Class is much more than Marx's definition of relationship to the means of production. Class involved your behavior, your basic assumptions, how you are taught to behave, what you expect from yourself and from others, your concept of a future, how you understand problems and solve them, how you think, feel, act.”
“Well, we're just All-American queers.”
“All this overt heterosexuality amused me. If only they knew.”
“No government has the right to tell its citizens when or whom to love. The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.”
“Every day you're alive and someone loves you is a miracle.”
“Put your money in your head, that way no one can take it from you.”
“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.”
“Whoever heard of a neurotic frog? Where do humans get off thinking they're the pinnacle of evolution?”
“Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.”
“I had never thought I had much in common with anybody. I had no mother, no father, no roots, no biological similarities called sisters and brothers. And for a future I didn't want a split-level home with a station wagon, pastel refrigerator, and a houseful of blonde children evenly spaced through the years. I didn't want to walk into the pages of McCall's magazine and become the model housewife. I didn't even want a husband or any man for that matter. I wanted to go my own way. That's all I think I ever wanted, to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I'd rather be alone.”
“He tried to drown his troubles but they knew how to swim.”
“I hate the telephone. I think the lowest circle of hell is reserved for Alexander Graham Bell.”
“Two wrongs don't make a right.No, but three will get you back on the freeway!”
“I mean, what do people talk about when they're married?" "Their kids, I guess." "Maybe that's all they have in common.”
“Any woman whose I.Q. hovers above her body temperature must be a feminist.”
“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.”
“I believe that we often disguise pain through ritual and it may be the only solace we have.”
“If you're afraid to die, you're afraid to live. You can't have one without the other.”
“When God made man she was practicing.”
“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.”
“Dean: Don't you find that somewhat of an aberration? Doesn't this disturb you my dear? After all, it's not normal. Molly: I know it's not normal for people in this world to be happy, and I'm happy.”
“Normal is the average of deviance.”
“He unzipped his pants and his brains fell out.”
“If you don't like my book, write your own. If you don't think you can write a novel, that ought to tell you something. If you think you can, do. No excuses. If you still don't like my novel, find a book you do like. Life is too short to be miserable. If you do like my novels, I commend your good taste.”
“I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.”
“Don't hope more than you're willing to work.”
“If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle. ”
“The only queer people are those who don't love anybody.”
“Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.”
“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
“Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.”
“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.”
“Sex makes monkeys out of all of us. If you don’t give in to it, you wind up a cold, unfeeling bastard. If you do, you spend the rest of your life picking up the pieces. . . .”
“Loving's pretty easy. It's letting someone love you that's hard.”
“Women need to feel loved and men need to feel needed.”
“Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.”
“One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.”
“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.”
“If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.”
“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.”
“When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.”
“Writers will happen in the best of families.”