Edna Ferber Quotes

98 Sourced Quotes

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

Edna Ferber
He's going for the adventure of it. They always have, no matter what excuse they've given, from the Holy Grail to the California gold fields. The difference in America is that the women have always gone along.

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

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

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

Edna Ferber
Don't you believe 'em when they say that what you don't know won't hurt you. Biggest lie ever was.

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

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

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

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

Edna Ferber
The Oklahoma wind tortured her. It rattled the doors and windows; it whirled the red dust through the house; its hot breath was on her agonized face as she lay there; if allowed its own way it leaped through the rooms, snatching the cloth off the table, the sheets off the bed, the dishes off the shelves.

Edna Ferber
'What about her Future?' Future, as she pronounced it, was spelled with a capital F and was a thin disguise for the word husband.

Edna Ferber
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
Someday... this part of the world is going to be so important that just to say you're an Alaskan will be bragging.

Edna Ferber
You're through in pictures, and plays, and vaudeville, and radio, and everything! You're a corpse, and you don't know it. Go get yourself buried.

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

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

Edna Ferber
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
Awake and asleep the novel is with you, dogging your footsteps. Strange formless bits of material float out from the ether about you and attach themselves to the main body of the story as though they had hung suspended in air for years, waiting.

Edna Ferber
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 pulse beats, as others have a highly developed music sense, or color reaction. It is a thing that cannot be acquired.

Edna Ferber
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
'I may not know much' — another form of locution often favored by her. The tone in which it was spoken utterly belied the words; the tone told you that not only did she know much, but all.

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

Edna Ferber
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 just when you think you have eluded her in the last town but one.

Edna Ferber
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
When the two married, Milly's people went through that ablutionary process known as washing their hands of her.

Edna Ferber