Tell me this--if you knew you would be poor as a church mouse all your life--if you knew you'd never have a line published--would you still go on writing--would you?''Of course I would,' said Emily disdainfully. 'Why, I have to write--I can't help it at times--I've just got to.

I love weaving a story and spinning it around with my pen.

Books are not written about proper children. They would so so dull and boring nobody would read them.

You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?

never write a line you'd be ashamed to read at your own funeral.

I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

Make them do as you want them to," she said. "I can’t," mourned Anne. "Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.

You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.

Nobody with any real sense of humor *can* write a love story. . . . Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. (90-91)