Edna Ferber Quotes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Any garment which is cut to fit you is much more becoming, even if it is not so splendid as a garment which has been cut to fit somebody not of your stature.

Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth.

Imported actors, like certain wines, sometimes do not stand the ocean trip. This can be as true of American actors in Europe as it is of European actors in America.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

But I have felt that to be a Jew was, in some ways at least, to be especially privileged.

I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion.

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?

Texas history is a varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive.

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

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

The astronomers tell us that other planets are gifted with two - four - even nine lavish moons. Imagine the romantic possibilities of nine moons.

I like any place that isn't here.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

Writing, to be memorable, must be done in a state of impassioned serenity.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Nicknames are fond names. We do not give them to people we dislike.

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.

Cherry cobbler is shortcake with a soul.

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

Whoever said love conquers all was a fool. Because almost everything conquers love - or tries to.

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

celebratin' New Year's Eve is like eatin' oranges. You got to let go your dignity t' really enjoy 'em.

I sat staring up at a shelf in my workroom from which thirty-one books identically dressed in neat dark green leather stared back at me with a sort of cold hostility like children who resent their parents. Don't stare at us like that! they said. Don't blame us if we didn't turn out to be the perfection you expected. We didn't ask to be brought into the world.

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

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

A placated bully is a hand-fed bully.

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.

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.

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

I think in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion, dislike, displeasure, resentment, fault-finding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense of injustice-they all make fine fuel.