Edna Ferber
The astronomers tell us that other planets are gifted with two - four - even nine lavish moons. Imagine the romantic possibilities of nine moons.Collection: Moon
Science had married the wilderness and was taming the savage shrew.Collection: Savages
I like any place that isn't here.Collection: Dissatisfaction
Texas history is a varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive.Collection: Texas
No woman ought to pretend she's intelligent. And if she is she ought to have the intelligence to pretend she isn't.Collection: Intelligent
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.Collection: Frustration
here in Texas maybe we've got into the habit of confusing bigness with greatness.Collection: Greatness
It sounds so far away and different. I like different places. I like any places that isn't here.Collection: Travel
Men often marry their mothers.Collection: Mother
Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. ... Roast Beef, Medium, is safe, and sane, and sure.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Nerves
The writer is a writer because he cannot help it. It is a compulsion.Collection: Helping
Take Texas the way Texas takes bourbon. Straight. It goes down easier.Collection: Texas
People in big empty places are likely to behave very much as the gods did on Olympus.Collection: Self Confidence
Nicknames are fond names. We do not give them to people we dislike.Collection: Names
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.Collection: Wall
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.Collection: Writing
I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion.Collection: Writing
Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?' 'It ain't hardly legal if you don't.Collection: Baseball
People permit life to slide past them like a deft pickpocket, their purse-not yet missed and now too late-in his hand.Collection: Life
Christmas is not a season. It is a feeling.Collection: Feelings
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.Collection: Wine
Anything can have happened in Oklahoma. Practically everything has.Collection: Oklahoma
The very rich and the very social are, often, the very stuffy.Collection: Rich
But I have felt that to be a Jew was, in some ways at least, to be especially privileged.Collection: Way
Writing, to be memorable, must be done in a state of impassioned serenity.Collection: Memorable
A whole roomful of Jews is like a charged battery. The vitality sparks seem to fly, and frequently the result is a short circuit.Collection: Vitality
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.Collection: Baseball
I suppose it is a gift, being young, but it isn't special. We've all got it, early in life.Collection: Special
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.Collection: Mistake
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.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Writing
We no longer build fireplaces for physical warmthwe build them for the warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Land
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.Collection: Motivational
A placated bully is a hand-fed bully.Collection: Bullying
don't you hate people who say they're not complaining and then complain?Collection: Hate
The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern.Collection: Sheep
Spring ... made fair false promises which summer was called upon to keep.Collection: Summer
Your idea of bliss is to wake up on a Monday morning knowing you haven't a single engagement for the entire week. You are cradled in a white paper cocoon tied up with typewriter ribbon.Collection: Monday
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.Collection: Land
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.Collection: Tired
If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.Collection: Texas
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.Collection: Color
Cherry cobbler is shortcake with a soul.Collection: Food
A writer's working hours are his waking hours. He is working as long as he is conscious and frequently when he isn't.Collection: Long
Housework's the hardest work in the world. That's why men won't do it.Collection: Men
You lose in the end unless you know how the wheel is fixed or can fix it yourself.Collection: Wheels