15 Quotes From Women Writers Who Shake Things Up

"Writers are not here to conform. We are here to challenge. We're not here to be comfortable—we're here, really, to shake things up. That's our job."

– Jeanette Winterson

"One of the most memorable things I hear is when someone tells me that my books got a reluctant reader to read."

– Suzanne Collins

"To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself."

– Anne Rice

"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."

– Gloria Steinem

"Every moment is beautiful; delicious even!"

– Alicia Keys

"Embrace what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable. I didn't have to become perfect because I've learned throughout my journey that perfection is the enemy of greatness."

– Janelle Monae

"Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated."

– Coretta Scott King

"If a book is well written, I always find it too short."

– Jane Austen

"The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think."

– Harper Lee

"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."

– Margaret Atwood

"The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart."

– Maya Angelou

"Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it."

– J.K. Rowling

"Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us."

– Alice Walker

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn."

– Anne Frank

"Wherever you go, you meet part of your story."

– Eudora Welty

Click to read more