Rebecca Makkai quote: "If there was a common thread between the great warriors and runaways of my Hulkinov ancestors, and my father the pathological expatriate, and me, it was just that: hotheaded self-righteousness. And not the bad kind, either. We actually were right. We just cared more about being right than doing what was right. And we cared more about being right than about our own lives."

I have the distinct feeling that when I'm old, and I look back on my life, my thirties will be o...
REBECCA MAKKAI

I did teach elementary school for quite a while, and so I didn't have to reach too far back for ...
REBECCA MAKKAI

When you talk to an author - to any artist, really - you learn something about how they do what they...
REBECCA MAKKAI

And second, everyone is so weird, but they're all completely accepted. It's like, okay, you h...
REBECCA MAKKAI

I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people b...
REBECCA MAKKAI

I've only cried at one book, but I'm too embarrassed to tell you which. It wasn't terrib...
REBECCA MAKKAI

Writing a short story is like painting a picture on the head of a pin. And just getting everything t...
REBECCA MAKKAI

I might be the villain of this story.
REBECCA MAKKAI

Sometimes I wish I could go back through time to meet Proust, just so I could give him my asthma inh...
REBECCA MAKKAI

These were wise, modern children, and they knew: a mother could be a witch, a child could be a crimi...
REBECCA MAKKAI

Like a good American, I wanted to sue somebody. But like a good librarian, I just sat at my desk and...
REBECCA MAKKAI

From age nine, my friends and I were on the streets, walking home, going to each other's houses,...
REBECCA STEAD

I love thinking of cartoon characters feeling really real feelings. And I love to do that, not just ...
REBECCA SUGAR

The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend ...
REBECCA MACKINNON

More and more I think of privatisation as being not just about the takeover of resources and power b...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Flowers heal me. Tulips make me happy. I keep myself surrounded by them as soon as they start coming...
REBECCA WELLS

I love hats and winter is the perfect time for them. I love winter time fashion.
REBECCA FERGUSON

Radio was used powerfully by Josef Goebbels to disseminate Nazi propaganda, and just as powerfully b...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Revolution is a phase, a mood, like spring, and just as spring has its buds and showers, so revoluti...
REBECCA SOLNIT

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intellig...
REBECCA WEST

In 220 years of American presidential politics, there had been no serious female major party contend...
REBECCA TRAISTER

You have to be really strong in the music industry, and I'm naturally very timid. That was reall...
REBECCA FERGUSON

Negative views of Pakistan expressed by prominent members of the global business community are taken...
REBECCA MACKINNON

One of the favorite conservative themes is that the cure for poverty is more marriage and earlier ma...
REBECCA TRAISTER

The erosion of privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment, written to protect us against unreasonable...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Facebook is blocked in mainland China, but is used heavily by the rest of the Chinese-speaking world...
REBECCA MACKINNON

When U.S. commercial interests press the Chinese government to do a better job of policing Chinese w...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call m...
REBECCA WEST

I hate women because they always know where things are.
REBECCA WEST

To me I'm just a regular person going to the mall with friends, and now I'm in Forever 21 an...
REBECCA BLACK

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and mat...
REBECCA WEST

The main difference between men and woman is that men are lunatics and woman are idiots.
REBECCA WEST

If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on the headstone might well be: "It seemed a g...
REBECCA WEST

It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
REBECCA WEST

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
REBECCA WEST

People call me feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a pros...
REBECCA WEST

When I get a brand new bag, I wear it for months and months.
REBECCA GAYHEART

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.
REBECCA WEST

Journalism - an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.
REBECCA WEST

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
REBECCA WEST

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are interesting monologues, that is...
REBECCA WEST

The 'Shawshank Redemption' has nothing to do with China, but that hasn't kept social med...
REBECCA MACKINNON

The prints shop manager, a balding man of about thirty years old, dressed in a plaid work shirt and ...
REBECCA MCNUTT

Mandy would much rather have imaginary friends who were real than real friends who were imaginary.
REBECCA MCNUTT

How can I tell a story we already know too well? Her name was Africa. His was France. He colonized h...
REBECCA SOLNIT

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call m...
REBECCA WEST

She saw she had fallen into the hands of one of those doctors who have strayed too far from apparent...
REBECCA WEST

I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the p...
REBECCA WEST

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers j...
REBECCA WEST

All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent di...
REBECCA WEST

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.
REBECCA WEST

There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vi...
REBECCA WEST

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.
REBECCA WEST

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so ...
REBECCA WEST

One of the most valuable things we can do to heal one another is listen to each other's stories.
REBECCA FALLS

Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other's...
REBECCA WEST

He is every other inch a gentleman.
REBECCA WEST

Did St Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better...
REBECCA WEST

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sle...
REBECCA WEST

Being classy is my teenage rebellion.
REBECCA MCKINSEY

Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform ...
REBECCA WEST

There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of ...
REBECCA WEST

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
REBECCA WEST

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call m...
REBECCA WEST

I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from ...
REBECCA WEST

It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
REBECCA WEST

When I first drove my car down Sunset Strip, I nearly crashed my car gazing at the monolithic ads of...
REBECCA PIDGEON

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.
REBECCA WEST

There's a lot of politics over who gets the next allocation of Congressional funding.
REBECCA MACKINNON

My goals have gone from being an all-star to just being able to play basketball. I always took for g...
REBECCA LOBO

Amazon webhosting dropped Wikileaks as a customer after receiving a complaint from U.S. Senator Joe ...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I was a sort of New York intellectual when I was 16. I wanted to dress like Annie Hall when I was 18...
REBECCA HALL

I'm really inspired by the show 'Future Boy Conan' from the '70s. It's a really ...
REBECCA SUGAR

Obama has proved to be particularly adept at using the media to disseminate his administration's...
REBECCA TRAISTER

It's so rare that I get to do something in my own accent in my own hometown.
REBECCA HALL

City life is stressful. Everybody is running around like crazy, stuck in traffic jams trying to make...
REBECCA PIDGEON

As in Pakistan, Tunisian and Egyptian human rights activists are concerned that any censorship mecha...
REBECCA MACKINNON

The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they ri...
REBECCA SOLNIT

It's not that bad things never happen. But there's a pattern in which most people are calm, ...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Our government and its social policies, its tax breaks, the way school days work, so much of the cou...
REBECCA TRAISTER

I've become really good at turning down the boring, pretty girl roles, the trophy wife, supermod...
REBECCA ROMIJN

There are people all over the world who like to write fan letters in the voice of their pet: 'He...
REBECCA HALL

Shopping is a bit of a relaxing hobby for me, which is sometimes troubling for the bank balance.
REBECCA HALL

Every year in China, Internet executives are officially rewarded for their 'patriotism.'
REBECCA MACKINNON

It's a controversial issue: many feminists reasonably worry that by taking the concentration off...
REBECCA TRAISTER

I am not trying to give an image of a fairytale, perfect, everything else, I am just being myself.
REBECCA LOOS

'Friday' is about hanging out with friends, having fun. I felt like it was my personality in...
REBECCA BLACK

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, a...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Sometimes I'm so tired, I look down at what I'm wearing, and if it's comfortable enough ...
REBECCA ROMIJN

Don't get me wrong - I love London, and still have an apartment there.
REBECCA LOOS

I wanted to step forward and be on TV and for people to see who I really was.
REBECCA LOOS

I'm a new mum who spends her days making baby food and cooking for her man. And I couldn't b...
REBECCA LOOS

I wanted control over what was said and what was not said, rather than holding my head down in shame...
REBECCA LOOS

I was reading so much about myself in the papers that was not me.
REBECCA LOOS

I did not know what my future was going to hold.
REBECCA LOOS

I am utterly in love with my son and my boyfriend and live in the most magical place on Earth. I'...
REBECCA LOOS

As a writer, I am not goddess of the universes I create. I am at most a stage manager of the plentif...
REBECCA WELLS

Thanks to the Internet in general and social media in particular, the Chinese people now have a mech...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Right after September 11, 2001, there weren't really any blogs in China, but there were a lot of...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Whatever Tencent can see, the Chinese government can see.
REBECCA MACKINNON

The Chinese government clearly does pay attention to public opinion expressed on the Internet - the ...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I don't think there's any serious discussion inside the Chinese government about liberalisin...
REBECCA MACKINNON

The Chinese government sometimes shuts down the Internet and mobile services in specific areas where...
REBECCA MACKINNON

The Chinese government clearly sees Internet and mobile innovation as a major driver of its global e...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and ...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Some of my acting heroes have built careers on playing characters who do horrendous things - they...
REBECCA HALL

Since 'Christine' started screening, I'm overwhelmed by the response from women and men ...
REBECCA HALL

I really think that 'Christine' is one in a million in terms of independent or studio.
REBECCA HALL

These days we have Smartphones, Smartcars, Smartboards, Smarteverything, but consider this: if techn...
REBECCA MCNUTT

The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.
REBECCA SOLNIT

I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three ...
REBECCA SOLNIT

If they lose their legal basis for owning a .cn domain, google.cn would cease to exist, or if it con...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I don't think that anyone can really understand anything until it's understood on a cellular...
REBECCA HALL

I definitely got my philanthropic genes from my mom and dad. They taught me from a very early age to...
REBECCA GAYHEART

An airplane should never lean too much to the left or the right, because it puts every passenger int...
REBECCA MCNUTT

She is shocked by the rows of thick Plexiglas windows, each equipped with a telephone, each with a p...
REBECCA MCNUTT

Every day it’s something worse being predicted. Mearth says that sooner or later copyright on book...
REBECCA MCNUTT

Amanda, you finally decided to answer the phone,” her mom exclaimed after picking up at the first ...
REBECCA MCNUTT

Love helped me live life instead of just survive it.
REBECCA DONOVAN

We were engaged in a very intricate dance of touching without touching, knowing without saying, and ...
REBECCA DONOVAN

Caro remembered how it was to lie so unself-consciously next to her best friends. Her aging body rec...
REBECCA WELLS

On Apple's special store for the Chinese market, apps related to the Dalai Lama are censored, as...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Consistently, Baidu has censored politically sensitive search results much more thoroughly than Goog...
REBECCA MACKINNON

We live in such an age of chatter and distraction. Everything is a challenge for the ears and eyes.
REBECCA PIDGEON

[N]obody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.
REBECCA WEST

All gardening is landscape painting,' said Alexander Pope.
REBECCA SOLNIT

It's not that girls are delusional, per se. It's just that they have this subtle ability to warp act...
REBECCA SERLE

Athletes who take to the classroom naturally or are encouraged to focus on grades should be able to ...
REBECCA LOBO

Almost every week, there are stories in the press or on Chinese social media about what even the off...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authorit...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I think that technology - computers and smart phones and 24-hour availability - often leaves me, and...
REBECCA TRAISTER

I was one of those little girls who practiced signing autographs since I was 5 years old.
REBECCA BLACK

I'm grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep p...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that...
REBECCA SOLNIT

The more we heat up the planet, the more it costs all of us, not just in money, but in colossal fami...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Eating apples is good on so many levels. There's fiber in the skin that's really good for yo...
REBECCA ROMIJN

There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.
REBECCA SOLNIT

There is clearly a constituency that appreciates the message that Google is sending, that it finds t...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I think acting can be very frustrating, and there's no experience that doesn't make you a be...
REBECCA HALL

I was the kid that grew up watching Bette Davis films.
REBECCA HALL

Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you ...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Like everyone else, I can barely take the waves of embarrassment that come with watching someone do ...
REBECCA TRAISTER

I like Sam Bailey - she's got a huge voice.
REBECCA FERGUSON

The U.S. relationship with Bahrain is obviously more complicated than with Syria and Iran.
REBECCA MACKINNON

Like Syria, the government of Bahrain employs aggressive tactics to censor and monitor its people...
REBECCA MACKINNON

You can't wait for someone to give you a show. That can't be the first time you're writi...
REBECCA SUGAR

Contemplate the good things in your life and be grateful for them.
REBECCA PIDGEON

We can't constantly tell stories of heroes. We have to hear the other stories, too, about people...
REBECCA HALL

I remember sitting on a bench in New York and sobbing and realising that my ambition to be a singer ...
REBECCA FERGUSON

I knew I could sing. That one thing I did believe in was that I could sing, but then constantly gett...
REBECCA FERGUSON

I was a really big fan of cartoons growing up, and I loved to read too much into them most of the ti...
REBECCA SUGAR

Constantly having to think about money is not nice. People used to say, 'Being rich doesn't ...
REBECCA FERGUSON

We are entering an era of heightened disaster, thanks to climate change. Being prepared for disaster...
REBECCA SOLNIT

There's so much crap attached to acting: the fame aspect, the ego aspect, the 'Am I good, am...
REBECCA HALL

The world you live in is not a given; much of what is best in it has been built through the struggle...
REBECCA SOLNIT

I got a phone call saying we are from the News of the World, and we're exposing you and David Be...
REBECCA LOOS

…I’m afraid of what the digital age will do to the world, to the things we think are important�...
REBECCA MCNUTT

If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is...
REBECCA SOLNIT

What are you doing?” Alecto asked in surprise, stepping back. Laughing brightly, she dragged him t...
REBECCA MCNUTT

She dug into one of the boxes, finding clay angels she’d made in art class when she was seven year...
REBECCA MCNUTT

Winters are a desolate time where all senses are wiped away, and here in Canada, this is especially ...
REBECCA MCNUTT

The ones who hate me the most are the ones who don't scare me.
REBECCA MCKINSEY

Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.
REBECCA WEST

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
REBECCA WEST

Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.
REBECCA WEST

I feel often that we don't have the right language to talk about emotions in disasters. Everyone...
REBECCA SOLNIT

I haven't heard of any cases of anti-American blog posts being censored or bloggers encountering...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I was an anorexic, beer drinking, class cutting, doodling, shoplifting, skater chick that was into n...
REBECCA MILLER

I think for a long time it seemed like working in an art form and being a feminist meant portraying ...
REBECCA HALL

Would the Protestant Reformation have happened without the printing press? Would the American Revolu...
REBECCA MACKINNON

In the nineteenth century, in part because a ton of American men moved west, in part because of the ...
REBECCA TRAISTER

I'm a very private person. I barely tell my friends what's going on half the time, so the id...
REBECCA HALL

You scare me, Ryan Daley. Even more than those demons outside that scream for my death. How is it th...
REBECCA LIM

I think this industry can be tough on everyone. You have to surround yourself with supportive people...
REBECCA FERGUSON

It is time to stop debating whether the Internet is an effective tool for political expression and i...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Tell me again about the girl whose hands
have no color. Whose hands are completely
white. ...
REBECCA WADLINGER

Farm Aid was started in 1985 by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews as a co...
REBECCA PIDGEON

A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting...
REBECCA WEST

Why hoard away so many back-issues of People Magazine? Fashion magazines are just empty promises. Yo...
REBECCA MCNUTT

Credibility is a basic survival tool.
REBECCA SOLNIT

As I started to pursue the subject more deeply I realized that walking was this wonderful meandering...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on o...
REBECCA MACKINNON

Human freedom increasingly depends on who controls what we know and, therefore, how we understand ou...
REBECCA MACKINNON

One reason that we have collectively plugged our ears against a decade of dismal revelations about B...
REBECCA TRAISTER

Companies should have a due diligence process to determine the likelihood that their technologies wi...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I think I have a job, which is to present a character in a story and entertain you and divert you wi...
REBECCA HALL

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a pr...
REBECCA WEST

I felt vulnerable and very much between friends. I remember walking down the hallway and thinking I ...
REBECCA STEAD

Ronald Reagan, when he was campaigning for President, said that he would break relations with Commun...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I want to try to make difficult people somehow relatable.
REBECCA HALL

I'm a diligent person, and that came directly from having hardworking parents.
REBECCA ROMIJN

I am always in awe of people who devote their lives to a good cause and are brave enough to take a s...
REBECCA PIDGEON

Whether it's Baidu or Chinese versions of YouTube or Sina or Sohu, Chinese Internet sites are ge...
REBECCA MACKINNON

I think of myself as Rebecca Wells from Lodi Plantation, in Central Louisiana, a girl who was lucky ...
REBECCA WELLS

It's time to take decisive action to stop American and other multinationals from aiding and abet...
REBECCA MACKINNON

It was impossible for Hillary Clinton to have chosen a path to the White House that bypassed the loa...
REBECCA TRAISTER

Sometimes Geraldine feels like she can drive forever. Maybe that’s partially why she took a job at...
REBECCA MCNUTT

'Living Single' was on in early 1990s - the show about Queen Latifah living with a bunch of ...
REBECCA TRAISTER

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a s...
REBECCA SOLNIT

Rebecca Makkai

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