Edna Ferber

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

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

"Roast beef, medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy."

"Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death."

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

"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."

"Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death."

"Living in the past is a dull and lonely business looking back strains the neck muscles causes you to bump into people not going your way."

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

"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."

"The leading lady had a large and saving sense of humor. But there is nothing that blunts the sense of humor more quickly than a few months of one-night stands. Even O. Henry could have seen nothing funny about that room."

"Then there were long, lazy summer afternoons when there was nothing to do but read. And dream. And watch the town go by to supper. I think that is why our great men and women so often have sprung from small towns, or villages. They have had time to dream in their adolescence. No cars to catch, no matinees, no city streets, none of the teeming, empty, energy-consuming occupations of the city child. Little that is competitive, much that is unconsciously absorbed at the most impressionable period, long evenings for reading, long afternoons in the fields or woods."

"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."

"That just goes to show, remarked Pearlie, that you must never judge a woman in a kimono or a bathing suit."

"I think that 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."

"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!"