Edna Ferber Quotes

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

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.

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

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

A closed mind is a dying mind.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

... 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.