Horace Greeley, b. 1811, American journalist. “Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.”

Walter Bagehot, b. 1826, British essayist and journalist. “The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.”

Sidney Lanier, b. 1842, American poet. “Music is Love in search of a word.”

Gertrude Stein, b. 1874, writer and patron of artists and writers. “All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation… You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death.” Quoted by Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast.

James Michener, b. 1907, American novelist, author of Hawaii. “The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.”

Joan Lowery Nixon, b. 1927, Houston author of YA and children’s fiction. “My husband and I have four children, and when they were young I had only one day a week in which someone could watch the preschoolers and I could write. I discovered that you never find time to write. You make time.”