[On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie.

Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.

All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.

I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

[To woman bragging about having kept her husband for seven years:] Don't worry, if you keep him long enough, he'll come back in style.

Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat My dress is 1922… My life is all like that.