Edna Ferber famous quotes

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Lonely #Past #People

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!
-- Edna Ferber

#Writing #Climbing #Interesting

A closed mind is a dying mind.
-- Edna Ferber

#Diversity #Mind #Dying

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Girl #New York #Air

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Writing #Emo Love #Greatest Love

Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.
-- Edna Ferber

#Life #Women #Struggle

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

#Inspirational #Women #Memorable

A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity, is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects.
-- Edna Ferber

#Beautiful #Men #Tree

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.
-- Edna Ferber

#Memorable #Sight #Should

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

#Struggle #Memorable #Looks

If American politics are too dirty for women to take part in, there's something wrong with American politics.
-- Edna Ferber

#Dirty #Literature #Nasty

The ideal view for daily writing, hour for hour, is the blank brick wall of a cold-storage warehouse. Failing this, a stretch of sky will do, cloudless if possible.
-- Edna Ferber

#Wall #Writing #Views

Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little.
-- Edna Ferber

#Literature #Littles #Too Much

There's no sauce for play like work.
-- Edna Ferber

#Play #Sauce

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Doors #Way #Hell

To be alive is a fine thing. It is the finest thing in the world, though hazardous. It is a unique thing. It happens only once in a lifetime. To be alive, to know consciously that you are alive, and to relish that knowledge -- this is a kind of magic. Or it may be a kind of madness, exhilarating but harmless.
-- Edna Ferber

#Unique #Magic #Once In A Lifetime

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

#Way #Jew

A whole roomful of Jews is like a charged battery. The vitality sparks seem to fly, and frequently the result is a short circuit.
-- Edna Ferber

#Vitality #Batteries #Sparks

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Land #United States #Acres

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Frustration #Clouds #Irritation

Housework's the hardest work in the world. That's why men won't do it.
-- Edna Ferber

#Men #World #Why Me

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

#Philosophy #Food #Beef

Cherry cobbler is shortcake with a soul.
-- Edna Ferber

#Food #Soul #Cobblers

I like any place that isn't here.
-- Edna Ferber

#Dissatisfaction

don't you hate people who say they're not complaining and then complain?
-- Edna Ferber

#Hate #People #Complaining

There are people who have a penchant for cities-more than that, a talent for them, a gift of sensing them, of feeling their rhythm and pulsebeats, as others have a highly developed music sense, or color reaction. It is a thing that cannot be acquired.
-- Edna Ferber

#Color #Cities #People

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

#Sheep #Goats #Busybodies

A placated bully is a hand-fed bully.
-- Edna Ferber

#Bullying #Hands #Bully

Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?' 'It ain't hardly legal if you don't.
-- Edna Ferber

#Baseball #Games #Doe

Bizarre as was the name she bore, Kim Ravenal always said she was thankful it had been no worse.
-- Edna Ferber

#Book #Names #Kim

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

#Moon #Two #Four

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

#Names #People #Giving

A writer's working hours are his waking hours. He is working as long as he is conscious and frequently when he isn't.
-- Edna Ferber

#Long #Waking #Hours

I don't know what it is that makes a writer go to his desk in his shut-off room day after day after year after year unless it is the sure knowledge that not to have done the daily stint of writing that day is infinitely more agonizing than to write.
-- Edna Ferber

#Writing #Years #Done

writers of novels are so busy being solitary that they haven't time to meet one another. But then, a writer learns nothing from a writer, conversationally. If a writer has anything witty, profound or quotable to say he doesn't say it. He's no fool. He writes it.
-- Edna Ferber

#Witty #Writing #Profound

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

#Men #Would Be #Tough

The feminine in the man is the sugar in the whisky. The masculine in the woman is the yeast in the bread. Without these ingredients the result is flat, without tang or flavor.
-- Edna Ferber

#Men #Flavor #Yeast

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Wine #Men #Europe

When a new post-war generation has grown to puberty and to youth and to manhood and womanhood, it should read, and it should be realistically told, of the futility, the idiocy, the utter depravity of war. For that matter, this instruction could begin at the age of six with the taking of those toy guns out of those toy holsters and throwing them in the ash-cans where they belong.
-- Edna Ferber

#War #Gun #Age

Take Texas the way Texas takes bourbon. Straight. It goes down easier.
-- Edna Ferber

#Texas #Way #Easier

here in Texas maybe we've got into the habit of confusing bigness with greatness.
-- Edna Ferber

#Greatness #Texas #Confusing

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Writing #Reflection #Tools

Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has.
-- Edna Ferber

#Oklahoma #States

Spring ... made fair false promises which summer was called upon to keep.
-- Edna Ferber

#Summer #Spring #Promise

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

#Letting Go #New Year #Years

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Ocean #Wine #Europe

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Nerves #Use #Way

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

#Two #People #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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Acceptance #Men #Land

I never go to weddings. Waste of time. Person can get married a dozen times. Lots of folks do. Family like ours, know everybody in the state of Texas and around outside, why, you could spend your life going to weddings. But a funeral, that's different. You only die once.
-- Edna Ferber

#Texas #Funeral #Different

If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.
-- Edna Ferber

#Texas #Want

A story must simmer in its own juice for months or even years before it's ready to serve.
-- Edna Ferber

#Inspirational #Years #Juice

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Tired #Men #Hearing

Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. Seated at Life's Dining Table, with the menu of Morals before you, your eye wanders a bit over the entrees, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things a la though you know that Roast Beef, Medium, is safe and sane, and sure.
-- Edna Ferber

#Philosophy #Food #Eye

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?
-- Edna Ferber

#Life #Thinking #Way

Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling.
-- Edna Ferber

#Love #Christmas #Feelings

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

#Travel #Sound #Different

America -- rather, the United States -- seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, over-friendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The chuckle among the nations of the world.
-- Edna Ferber

#Ocean #Moving #America

Any piece of furniture, I don't care how beautiful it is, has got to be lived with, and kicked about, and rubbed down, and mistreated by servants, and repolished, and knocked around and dusted and sat on or slept in or eaten off of before it develops its real character ... A good deal like human beings.
-- Edna Ferber

#Beautiful #Real #Character

Men often marry their mothers.
-- Edna Ferber

#Mother #Men

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

#Trying #Fool #Love Conquers All

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

#Writing #Thinking #Order

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Writing #Thinking #Order

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Land #People #Magic

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Cutting #Literature #Becoming

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

#Memorable #Writing #Serenity

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

#Helping #Compulsion

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Children #Book #Dark

I suppose it is a gift, being young, but it isn't special. We've all got it, early in life.
-- Edna Ferber

#Special #Youth #Young

... home isn't always the place where you were born and bred. Home is the place where your everyday clothes are, and where somebody or something needs you.
-- Edna Ferber

#Home #Clothes #Everyday

But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.
-- Edna Ferber

#Garden #Green #Weapons

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

#Smart #Towns #Serious

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

#Wheels #Ends #Fixed

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

#Giving #Would Be #World

No woman ought to pretend she's intelligent. And if she is she ought to have the intelligence to pretend she isn't.
-- Edna Ferber

#Intelligent

It's terrible to realize that you don't learn how to live until you're ready to die; and, then it's too late.
-- Edna Ferber

#Too Late #Realizing #Terrible

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

#Country #Interesting #May

People permit life to slide past them like a deft pickpocket, their purse-not yet missed and now too late-in his hand.
-- Edna Ferber

#Life #Past #Hands

Science had married the wilderness and was taming the savage shrew.
-- Edna Ferber

#Savages #Taming #Shrews

It was part of theTexas ritual? We know about champagne and caviar but we talk hog and hominy.
-- Edna Ferber

#Caviar #Champagne #Ritual

We no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth—we build them for the warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by.
-- Edna Ferber

#Dream #Home #Soul

There are ... just two kinds of girls. Those who go down town Saturday nights, and those who don't.
-- Edna Ferber

#Girl #Night #Two

[Women] ... is nothin' but little girls in long skirts, and their hair done up.
-- Edna Ferber

#Girl #Women #Hair

There are two ways of doing battle against Disgrace. You may live it down; or you may run away from it and hide. The first method is heart-breaking, but sure. The second cannot be relied upon because of the uncomfortable way Disgrace has of turning up at your heels.
-- Edna Ferber

#Running #Heart #Two

Any man who can look handsome in a dirty baseball suit is an Adonis. There is something about the baggy pants, and the Micawber-shaped collar, and the skull-fitting cap, and the foot or so of tan, or blue, or pink undershirt sleeve sticking out at the arms, that just naturally kills a man's best points.
-- Edna Ferber

#Baseball #Dirty #Men

People in big empty places are likely to behave very much as the gods did on Olympus.
-- Edna Ferber

#Self Confidence #People #Arrogance

All the difference in the world between the movies and the thrill I get out of a play at the theater. Ay, yes! Like fooling around with paper dolls when you could be playing with a real live baby.
-- Edna Ferber

#Baby #Real #Play

The very rich and the very social are, often, the very stuffy.
-- Edna Ferber

#Rich #Poor #Social

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.
-- Edna Ferber

#Mistake #People #Mad

But almost any place is Baghdad if you don't know what will happen in it.
-- Edna Ferber

#Adventure #Baghdad

Wasn't marriage, like life, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn't it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt.
-- Edna Ferber

#Marriage #Hurt #Stars

Now gae your wa'sTho'anes as gude As ever happit flesh and blude, Yet part we maunthe case sae hard is, Amang the writers and the bardies That lang they'll brook the auld I trow, Or neibours cry,'Weel brook the new'.
-- Edna Ferber

#Flesh #Sae #Cry

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

#Children #Book #Generations