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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.

Ben Hecht

I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops.
BEN HECHT

Cities Jail Sleep
The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it’s a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it’s a flop.
BEN HECHT

Director Flop Geniuses Head Producer Spear
I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.
BEN HECHT

Agony Day Dream Valentines
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.
BEN HECHT

Jobs Stars Writing
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.
BEN HECHT

Business Reading Time
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.
BEN HECHT

Buzzing Clock Everywhere Hour Learn
Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
BEN HECHT

Chicago Offering Yellowstone
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.
BEN HECHT

Effort Games Years
I discovered early in my movie work that a movies never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
BEN HECHT

Directors Men Movie
A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
BEN HECHT

Fake Men People Thinking
In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
BEN HECHT

Hollywood Names Thirty
Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.
BEN HECHT

Age Dark Mind
There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.
BEN HECHT

Death Friends Old Silence
Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
BEN HECHT

Fate Moving People
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.
BEN HECHT

Art Christianity Conflict War
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
BEN HECHT

Diversity Justice Safety

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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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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Popular Authors

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