Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul...

Marguerite Yourcenar
French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar (born June 8, 1903) was the first woman elected to the Académie française, a centuries-old assembly of academics charged with the custody of the French language. To accomodate her, the bathroom door labels were changed: one for "Messieurs" and one for "Marguerite Yourcenar."

Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.

Gregory Maguire
Happy birthday, Gregory Maguire! A year after his bestselling novel Wicked was published, composer Stephen Schwartz stumbled across it on vacation in Hawaii. He fell in love, convinced Maguire to give him the stage production rights, and got to work. Wicked, the musical, premiered in 1998 and is now the tenth longest running show in Broadway history.

Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.

Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata (born June 11, 1899) was the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Committee cited his novels Old Capital, Thousand Cranes, and Snow Country as examples of his "narrative mastery," but Kawabata himself only considered one of his novels ever really finished: the semi-fictional Master of Go.

There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

Audrey Niffenegger
Happy birthday, Audrey Niffenegger! Her bestselling debut, The Time Traveler's Wife, almost hit shelves as a graphic novel. Niffenegger, who trained as a visual artist, never really planned on becoming a fiction writer. She only switched to novel writing when she realized the time travel elements of her story were too tricky to convey in images.

I believe in the magic and authority of words.

René Char
In the early 1930s, popular French poet René Char (born June 14, 1907) rubbed elbows with Pablo Picasso and Albert Camus, but when World War II brought German soldiers to his country, he put down his pen and said goodbye to his friends. Char joined the French resistance in 1940, leading troops and commanding a parachute drop zone under the nom de guerre Captain Alexandre.

Reading was a joy, a desperately needed escape -- I didn't read to learn, I was reading to read.

Christian Bauman
Happy birthday, Christian Bauman! In between serving in the United States Army and writing two successful novels about soldiers, he made a living as a a folk singer. For several years, he toured North America as a solo act and as part of the group Camp Hoboken.

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.

Erich Segal
American author Erich Segal (born June 16, 1937) is best known for his 1970 romance, Love Story—he wrote the popular novel and the screenplay for the hit film adaptation. Not so successful? The 1978 sequel, Oliver's Story. That movie was advertised with this tagline: "It takes someone very special to help you forget someone very special."

You ought to expect better of people. It encourages you to be a better person yourself.

Jeph Jacques