Keep it in tune with the times, but don’t write with the specific purpose of trying to create a hit. If you’re doing it strictly to make money, you’re crazy. There are easier ways to...

A song just doesn’t come on. I’ve always had to tease it out, squeeze it out.

Love is the reason you were born.

A song must move the story ahead. A song must take the place of dialogue. If a song halts the show, pushes it back, stalls it, the audience won’t buy it; they’ll be unhappy.

My father assigned me to keep his scrapbooks. At first I was interested in reading only his rave notices, but I got interested in reading what the critics were saying about whether the play was...

A songwriter should have friends who are similarly interested; should move about in the milieu of work he has chosen for himself.

No thesaurus can give you those words, no rhyming dictionary. They must happen out of you.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could write a poem two pages long. Could she have brought it to a music publisher?

The audience, going along with the story, knows when the song is stuck in, feels it, resents it and can’t enjoy it, and the song fails.

I began to be impressed by what made a good book-how you needed to have a sensible story, a plot that developed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end that would tie everything together.

The man in our society is the breadwinner; the woman has enough to do as the homemaker, wife and mother.

I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.

The songwriter mustn’t fall in love with his own song. If it doesn’t belong, he can’t push it into a show. Let him save it; maybe it’ll fit in another show.

I do think song writing is a man’s game. It requires push, energy, movement, mixing; it is a field that is and has been dominated by men.

We’re confined to a framework of music, and I feel that the words can be poetic, but I wouldn’t say poetry in the strictest sense.

Grab your coat, and get your hat, Leave your worry on the doorstep Just direct your feet, To the sunny side of the street.

I don’t care how good a song is – if it holds back the storyline, stalls the plot, your audience will reject it.

Write what you feel. Write because of that need for expression.

We’ve accumulated a lot of things over the years and many things from our grandmother. Hopefully it’ll be all right. I really don’t want to cry, but I can’t help it.

If you don’t have a story that will hold the audience, you won’t have a successful show.

There aren’t more lady songwriters for the same reason that there aren’t more lady doctors or lady accountants or lady lawyers; not enough women have the time for careers.

Oh yes, we’re very happy.

In a show or a movie, one must work with many people. Many women just don’t have the time for it.

A rhyme doesn’t make a song.