Edna Ferber Quotes

Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

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.

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

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. Seated at Life's Dining Table, with the menu of Morals before you, your eye wanders a bit over the entrees, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things a la though you know that Roast Beef, Medium, is safe and sane, and sure.

It was part of theTexas ritual? We know about champagne and caviar but we talk hog and hominy.

There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds.

Funny, isn't it, how your whole life goes by while you think you're only planning the way you're going to live it?

In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in the world.

The feminine in the man is the sugar in the whisky. The masculine in the woman is the yeast in the bread. Without these ingredients the result is flat, without tang or flavor.

Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.

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.

If men ever discovered how tough women actually are, they would be scared to death.

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

Books should be cherished, like children, books are for the next generation, like children, like history.

... home isn't always the place where you were born and bred. Home is the place where your everyday clothes are, and where somebody or something needs you.

But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.

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

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

America -- rather, the United States -- seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, over-friendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The chuckle among the nations of the world.

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

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics.

The small town smart set is deadly serious about its smartness.

It's terrible to realize that you don't learn how to live until you're ready to die; and, then it's too late.

Opinion! If every one had so little tact as to give their true opinion when it was asked this would be a miserable world.

Emma McChesney was engaged in that nerve-wracking process known as getting things out of the way. When Emma McChesney aimed to get things out of the way she did not use a shovel; she used a road-drag.

I never would just open a door and walk through, I had to bust it down for the hell of it. I just naturally liked doing things the hard way.

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.

It sounds so far away and different. I like different places. I like any places that isn't here.

All the difference in the world between the movies and the thrill I get out of a play at the theater. Ay, yes! Like fooling around with paper dolls when you could be playing with a real live baby.

Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. ... Roast Beef, Medium, is safe, and sane, and sure.

Any man who can look handsome in a dirty baseball suit is an Adonis. There is something about the baggy pants, and the Micawber-shaped collar, and the skull-fitting cap, and the foot or so of tan, or blue, or pink undershirt sleeve sticking out at the arms, that just naturally kills a man's best points.

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

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.

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

Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.

A whole roomful of Jews is like a charged battery. The vitality sparks seem to fly, and frequently the result is a short circuit.

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.

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.

The writer is a writer because he cannot help it. It is a compulsion.

Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has.

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.

There is an interesting resemblance in the speeches of dictators, no matter what country they may hail from or what language they may speak.

Most of the men regarded Europe as a wine list. In their mental geography Rheims, Rhine, Moselle, Bordeaux, Champagne, or Würzburg were not localities but libations.

One can summon courage and fortitude to face tragedy; irritations and frustrations are a cloud of mosquitoes that nip and sting and drive one frantic.