Fannie Hurst Quotes & Sayings

The vast army of women seeking divorce are mainly after easy alimony from men they have ceased to love - surely one of the most despicable forms of barter that can exchange human hands. — Fannie Hurst

The creative writer is usually captive to his next book. — Fannie Hurst

A woman has to be twice as good as a man to go half as far. — Fannie Hurst

The grand canyon which yawns between the writer's concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss. — Fannie Hurst

One evening in one of those Over-the-Rhine cafes which were plentiful along Vine Street of the Cincinnati of the nineties, a traveling salesman leaned across his stein of Moerlein's Extra Light and openly accused Ray Schmidt of being innocent. — Fannie Hurst

Life owes me a living worth living. Yes, Eden regarded life as her debtor, she its relentless paymaster. — Fannie Hurst

I loathe all this blind rushing pell-mell into a struggle arranged by the mighty minority and paid for with the lives of young men who are drugged on trumped-up ideals. — Fannie Hurst

The maimed bodies aren't the worst. That's the easy way to hate war. The safe way. I - hate it just as much for the maimed souls that stay at home ... — Fannie Hurst

Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war. — Fannie Hurst

Charm is an odorless perfume, which cannot be anchored in the chemists' test tube. It is a permeation, a radiation. It emanates from the climate of a warm human spirit, which not only contains light, but gives it off. — Fannie Hurst

Luscious feet that listened to the soil and stole its secrets. — Fannie Hurst

Isn't success ridiculously easy, once it begins to succeed? ... after the strain and sweat and pushing until the very groins of your being shrieked protest, something like momentum happened. It took your wits and your concentration and your continued willing sweat, of course, to keep it going, but the success of success had ball bearings. — Fannie Hurst

[Wishing her mother had named her Beulah:] At least you did not sit on your beulah. — Fannie Hurst

I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not. — Fannie Hurst

I would rather regret what I have done than what I have not. — Fannie Hurst

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing. — Fannie Hurst

It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to. — Fannie Hurst

There is no adequate definition for creative writing, any more than it is possible to describe pain or flavor or color. — Fannie Hurst

It would be a fallacy to deduce that the slow writer necessarily comes up with superior work. There seems to be scant relationshipbetween prolificness and quality. — Fannie Hurst

Crushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do. — Fannie Hurst

The literary wiseacres prognosticate in many languages, as they have throughout so many centuries, setting the stage for new hautmonde in letters and making up the public's mind. — Fannie Hurst

Any work of art ... is great when it makes you feel that its creator has dipped into your very heart for his sensation. — Fannie Hurst

Nervous hands as if the fingers were dripping from them like icicles. — Fannie Hurst

A woman is not a whole woman without the experience of marriage. In the case of a bad marriage, you win if you lose. Of the two alternatives - bad marriage or none - I believe bad marriage would be better. It is a bitter experience and a high price to pay for fulfillment, but it is the better alternative. — Fannie Hurst

Oh - oh, why is it that the members of a family feel privileged to treat one another with a cruelty they would not exhibit to the merest stranger? — Fannie Hurst

Some authors have what amounts to a metaphysical approach. They admit to inspiration. Sudden and unaccountable urgencies to writecatapult them out of sleep and bed. For myself, I have never awakened to jot down an idea that was acceptable the following morning. — Fannie Hurst

Sex is a discovery. — Fannie Hurst

Family. A snug kind of word. — Fannie Hurst

Writing is the loneliest job in the world. There's always that frustrating chasm to bridge between the concept and the writing of it. We're a harassed tribe, we writers. — Fannie Hurst

We dig our graves with our teeth. — Fannie Hurst

Some people think they are worth a lot of money just because they have it. — Fannie Hurst

But suppose, asks the student of the professor, we follow all your structural rules for writing, what about that something else that brings the book alive? What is the formula for that? The formula for that is not included in the curriculum. — Fannie Hurst

Few enjoy noisy overcrowded functions. But they are a gesture of goodwill on the part of host or hostess, and also on the part of guests who submit to them. — Fannie Hurst