For this my mother wrapped me warm, And called me home against the storm, And coaxed my infant nights to quiet, And gave me roughage in my diet, And tucked me in my bed at eight, And clipped my hair, and marked my weight, And watched me as I sat and stood: That I might grow to womanhood To hear a whistle and drop my wits And break my heart to clattering bits.
Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.
Well, there are always those who cannot distinguish between glitter and glamour . . . the glamour of Isadora Duncan came from her great, torn, bewildered, foolhardy soul.
Hold your pen and spare your voice.
Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.
I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. ''Out there,'' I called it.
When your bank account is so overdrawn that it is positively photographic, steps must be taken.
Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter's pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.
I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses. I went to a convent in New York-the Blessed Sacrament... I was fired from there, finally, for a lot of things, among them my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.
My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart, -- And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
[On being told party guests were ducking for apples:] There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life.
[On Kay Strozzi in The Silent Witness:] Miss Strozzi ... had the temerity to wear as truly horrible a gown as ever I have seen on the American stage. ... Had she not luckily been strangled by a member of the cast while disporting this garment, I should have fought my way to the stage and done her in, myself.
They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.
All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.
On lady novelists: As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter.
[When asked what was the inspiration for most of her work:] Need of money, dear.
If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.
I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.
[On being told their loquacious, domineering host was 'outspoken':] By whom?
This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine.
The ones I like are ‘cheque’ and ‘enclosed.’
If I had any decency, I'd be dead. Most of my friends are.
Age before beauty, and pearls before swine.
Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.
... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
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