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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

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I'm Tired Of Hearing

Edna Ferber

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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.

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People Permit Life To Slide Past Them Like A Deft Pickpocket, Their Purse-not Yet Missed And Now Too Late-in His Hand.

A Closed Mind Is A Dying Mind.

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.

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A Whole Roomful Of Jews Is Like A Charged Battery. The Vitality Sparks Seem To Fly, And Frequently The Result Is A Short Circuit.

Big Doesn't Necessarily Mean Better. Sunflowers Aren't Better Than Violets.

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.

Wasn't Marriage, Like Life, Unstimulating And Unprofitable And Somewhat Empty When Too Well Ordered And Protected And Guarded. Wasn't It Finer, More Splendid, More Nourishing, When It Was, Like Life Itself, A Mixture Of The Sordid And The Magnificent; Of Mud And Stars; Of Earth And Flowers; Of Love And Hate And Laughter And Tears And Ugliness And Beauty And Hurt.

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Housework's The Hardest Work In The World. That's Why Men Won't Do It.

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.

Christmas Is Not A Season. It Is A Feeling.

Science Had Married The Wilderness And Was Taming The Savage Shrew.

Here In Texas Maybe We've Got Into The Habit Of Confusing Bigness With Greatness.

The Writer Is A Writer Because He Cannot Help It. It Is A Compulsion.

To Be Alive Is A Fine Thing. It Is The Finest Thing In The World, Though Hazardous. It Is A Unique Thing. It Happens Only Once In A Lifetime. To Be Alive, To Know Consciously That You Are Alive, And To Relish That Knowledge -- This Is A Kind Of Magic. Or It May Be A Kind Of Madness, Exhilarating But Harmless.

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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.

People In Big Empty Places Are Likely To Behave Very Much As The Gods Did On Olympus.

Self Confidence

I Sat Staring Up At A Shelf In My Workroom From Which Thirty-one Books Identically Dressed In Neat Dark Green Leather Stared Back At Me With A Sort Of Cold Hostility Like Children Who Resent Their Parents. Don't Stare At Us Like That! They Said. Don't Blame Us If We Didn't Turn Out To Be The Perfection You Expected. We Didn't Ask To Be Brought Into The World.

Celebratin' New Year's Eve Is Like Eatin' Oranges. You Got To Let Go Your Dignity T' Really Enjoy 'em.

[women] ... Is Nothin' But Little Girls In Long Skirts, And Their Hair Done Up.

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The Very Rich And The Very Social Are, Often, The Very Stuffy.

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.

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