Literary Birthday – 12 June – Rona Jaffe

Rona Jaffe was born 12 June 1931, and died 30 December 2005.

Seven Quotes

Almost all American writers tend to overwrite, to tell too much… It actually takes a great deal more discipline to be able to leave out rather than to throw in everything. This means that you have to say in one sentence precisely what you mean, instead of saying sort of what you kind of mean in hundreds of sentences and hoping the sum total will add up.
The most valuable commodity in business today, if people would only recognize it, is enthusiasm.
I hate February. I think whoever made the calendar was smart to make it the shortest month. Every February I always think: if I can only get through February everything will be all right.
Every girl is an authority about her own life.
She didn’t really want to forget all of it, because it had all meant happiness at the time it happened. She only wanted to to be able someday to remember without finding it painful. That was the trick, to keep all the good things from the past and cast away the ones that hurt.
[The Best of Everything is] a very human, very universal story about the difference between what one wants and what one gets.
All writers need support, but many women in early career have fewer resources available to them and often many demands made upon them. It gives me great pleasure to help some of them make their way at this early stage.

Rona Jaffe was a popular American novelist who wrote for Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1960s. She is best known for her controversial novel, Mazes and Monsters, and also for The Best of Everything.