Quotes

It's terrible to realize you don't learn how to live until you're ready to die and, then it's too late.

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

Roast beef, medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy.

[replying to Noël Coward, who once encountered her when she was wearing a tailored suit and said, "You look almost like a man"] So do you.

[from her autobiography "A Peculiar Treasure", describing her reaction to "Ol' Man River" from "Show Boat", based on her best-selling novel] The music mounted, mounted, and I give you my word my hair stood on end, the tears came to my eyes, I breathed like a heroine in a melodrama . . . This was great music. This was music that would outlast your day and my day.

[on her acclaimed novel "So Big"] The title had been only a tentative working one. While the title exactly expressed the book's theme, it seemed in itself to be pretty stomach-turning and I didn't for a moment mean to keep it.