Edna Ferber Quotes - Page 2

I suppose it is a gift, being young, but it isn't special. We've all got it, early in life.

Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little.

I never go to weddings. Waste of time. Person can get married a dozen times. Lots of folks do. Family like ours, know everybody in the state of Texas and around outside, why, you could spend your life going to weddings. But a funeral, that's different. You only die once.

About mistakes it's funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs they get mad.

There are two ways of doing battle against Disgrace. You may live it down; or you may run away from it and hide. The first method is heart-breaking, but sure. The second cannot be relied upon because of the uncomfortable way Disgrace has of turning up at your heels.

It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.

We no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth—we build them for the warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by.

I sometimes wonder ... if the land is not destroying the people who inhabit it as the people who inhabit it are destroying the land. A magic continent, a Peculiar Treasure, stuffed with riches, millions in it are starving in the midst of plenty.

don't you hate people who say they're not complaining and then complain?

The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern.

I am not belittling the brave pioneer men but the sunbonnet as well as the sombrero has helped to settle this glorious land of ours.

A placated bully is a hand-fed bully.

Spring ... made fair false promises which summer was called upon to keep.

Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.

A woman can look both moral and exciting... if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle.

Your idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning knowing you haven't a single engagement for the entire week. You are cradled in a white paper cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon.

No one in the United States has the right to own millions of acres of American land, I don't care how they came by it.

If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.

I'm tired of hearing you men say that this and that and the other isn't woman's work. Any work is woman's work that a woman can do well.

There are people who have a penchant for cities-more than that, a talent for them, a gift of sensing them, of feeling their rhythm and pulsebeats, as others have a highly developed music sense, or color reaction. It is a thing that cannot be acquired.

Cherry cobbler is shortcake with a soul.

A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity, is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects.

A writer's working hours are his waking hours. He is working as long as he is conscious and frequently when he isn't.

Housework's the hardest work in the world. That's why men won't do it.

You lose in the end unless you know how the wheel is fixed or can fix it yourself.