Dorothy Fields

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.

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 good or not.

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

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

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.

A rhyme doesn’t make a song.

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

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

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.

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

Love is the reason you were born.

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

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.

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

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 make money.

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

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

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.

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.