The man in our society is the breadwinner; the woman has enough to do as the homemaker, wife and mother.

Keep it in tune with the times, but don't write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you're doing it strictly to make money, you're crazy. There are easier ways to make money.

The songwriter mustn't fall in love with his own song. If it doesn't belong, he can't push it into a show. Let him save it; maybe it'll fit in another show.

A rhyme doesn't make a song.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

A songwriter should have friends who are similarly interested; should move about in the milieu of work he has chosen for himself.