Edna Ferber

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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

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

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

A closed mind is a dying mind.