Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
BEN HECHTThe rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
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The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
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The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
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A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining.
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Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
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Love is a hole in the heart.
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He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
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I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me.
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Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
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Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
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That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
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I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.
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Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
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H.L.Mencken’s war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
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Three years ago, the white hope of the theatre. Today, a mug. That’s New York for you. Puts you on a Christmas tree, and then – the alley.
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Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.
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People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
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Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
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Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him.
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Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It’s just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different.
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A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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For many years Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.
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Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent.
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I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops.
BEN HECHT