Just about everything significant in my life happened after I passed forty. I was a housewife and mother, but yearned to be a writer. I worked at my writing whenever I could snatch a moment, and I assembled several manuscripts. I was just about forty when my first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published. Then a few months later came The Good Earth. My career was launched at last, and it has given me the richest possible satisfaction

From that house there has come so much life that it ought never to die or fall into ruin... For me that house was a gateway to America.

I don't wait for moods - you'd never get anything done if you did.

When hope is taken away from a people, moral degeneration follows swiftly thereafter.

the proper place to eat lobster ... is in a lobster shack as close to the sea as possible. There is no menu card because there is nothing else to eat except boiled lobster with melted butter.

I do not believe in a child world. It is a fantasy world. I believe the child should be taught from the very first that the whole world is his world, that adult and child share one world, that all generations are needed.

When we define democracy now it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.