Quotes from Jennifer Chiaverini

The moment a gentleman perfects an invention and petitions the government for aid, he ceases to be an innocent citizen and becomes a culprit, a man to be shirked, browbeaten, and sneered at. I have never heard of any mechanician, inventor, or natural scientist who failed to find the government all but inaccessible, and whom the government did not discourage and treat badly.

The world is never ready for any innovation," he grumbled. "The vast majority of people stubbornly cling to the past until people possessing foresight and a sense of adventure break a trail and bring them into the future.

Darling, you must never become accustomed to the extraordinary and the outrageous. If you do, little by little, you'll learn to accept anything.

And of course you believed their wise counsel," said Elizabeth lightly, "because people who have never met me are always the best judge of my character.

What's the point of having the personal cell phone number of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff if you don't call him every once in a while?

There comes a time in every young woman's life when she must learn to trust the evidence of her own senses, of her own experiences, if it does not confirm what she has heard from others.

May the New Year be as full of happiness and peace and friendship.

'What I would give,' I thought, 'to have been present as Elizabeth Keckley measured Mary Lincoln for a new gown, to overhear their conversations on topics significant and ordinary, to observe the Lincoln White House from such an intimate perspective.'

I was very fortunate that my first novel captivated the imaginations of so many readers who asked for a sequel. After that, one book led to another as I discovered other facets to my characters I wanted to investigate further.

In my contemporary stories, I write about today's quilters, inventive techniques they use, and how technology has influenced their art. Novels set in the past let me have fun researching patterns that were popular and fabrics and tools available to quilters through history.

People who assume my books are only about quilts obviously haven't read them! I've always known that my books are about quilters - in other words, people - rather than quilts or quilting.

Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie.

Over the years, I've traveled to many places for inspiration and research, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina, California, and Hawaii.

Mary Lincoln provided Elizabeth Keckley with opportunities for social and economic advancement she probably had never imagined during her years as a slave, while Elizabeth offered Mary the loyal, steadfast friendship she craved but had always found so elusive.

Two quilters who have just met will be strangers only until their mutual passion for quilting is revealed. Then they can talk for hours like the best of friends.

Anyone who works on a quilt, who devotes her time, energy, creativity, and passion to that art, learns to value the work of her hands. And as any quilter will tell you, a quilter's quilting friends are some of the dearest, most generous, and most supportive people she knows.

I wanted to write about women and their work, and about valuing the work we, as women, choose to do. Too many women I knew disparaged their work. Many working mothers thought they ought to be home with their children instead, so they carried around too much guilt to enjoy much job satisfaction.

Intolerable wrongs we accept now as a matter of course would have provoked marches in the streets and calls for new elections only a few years ago.

We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Good people with strong convictions could overturn any injustice if they simply refused to quit.

Upon reflection, Henry found it difficult to disagree with Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune and frequent critic of the Lincoln administration, when he complained that the president had emancipated slaves where the Union could not free them and had kept them enslaved in places where the Union did enjoy the power to give them liberty.

any poet who writes for the world beyond his own threshold should have something in his nature of the statesman.

fellow students taught her about fighting for justice and making her voice heard, and more worldly friends invited her to expand her consciousness in ways that she never would have imagined back in Brown Deer

Passionate professors shook her slumbering social conscience awake