[The writer] wants both to do the best possible work and also to reach the largest possible audience. The result is a fairly normal condition of discouragement.

there is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain.

... Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects.

Herbert used to say that he was as tight as the paper on the wall.

The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting.

It's money that brings trouble. It always has and it always will.

Men love a joke - on the other fellow. But your really humorous woman loves a joke on herself.