Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) is a prolific American writer who became famous with her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle; she is also a mystery writer and an Emmy-nominated screenwriter.

Quotes

  • If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.
    • 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.
  • Normal is the average of deviance.
  • 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.
  • Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
    • Alma Mater (2001), p. 108. — but not originally hers, see Misattributed below.

Starting from Scratch (1989)

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.


Disputed

  • The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
    • 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."


Misattributed

  • Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.
    • 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, 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 on Quote Investigator website.
  • Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
    • Brown may have used this quote in 2001 but it was it in a 365 day "Quote" calendar in 1994.
This article is issued from Wikiquote. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.