“Be you wise and never sad,You will get your lovely lad.Never serious be, nor true,And your wish will come to you--And if that makes you happy, kid,You'll be the first it ever did.”

“Lady, lady, never startConversation toward your heart;Keep your pretty words serene;Never murmur what you mean.Show yourself, by word and look,Swift and shallow as a brook.Be as cool and quick to goAs a drop of April snow;Be as delicate and gayAs a cherry flower in May.Lady, lady, never speakOf the tears that burn your cheek-She will never win him, whoseWords had shown she feared to lose.Be you wise and never sad,You will get your lovely lad.Never serious be, nor true,And your wish will come to you-And if that makes you happy, kid,You'll be the first it ever did.”

“To keep something, you must take care of it. More, you must understand just what sort of care it requires. You must know the rules and abide by them. She could do that. She had been doing it all the months, in the writing of her letters to him. There had been rules to be learned in that matter, and the first of them was the hardest: never say to him what you want him to say to you. Never tell him how sadly you miss him, how it grows no better, how each day without him is sharper than the day before. Set down for him the gay happenings about you, bright little anecdotes, not invented, necessarily, but attractively embellished. Do not bedevil him with the pinings of your faithful heart because he is your husband, your man, your love. For you are writing to none of these. You are writing to a soldier.”

“He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell.He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that.”

“I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.”

“MenThey hail you as their morning starBecause you are the way you are.If you return the sentiment,They'll try to make you different;And once they have you, safe and sound,They want to change you all around.Your moods and ways they put a curse on;They'd make of you another person.They cannot let you go your gait;They influence and educate.They'd alter all that they admired.They make me sick, they make me tired.”

“Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.”