Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.
BEN HECHTPeople’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book.
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There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.
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The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops.
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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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I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
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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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Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
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I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
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The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can’t have both.
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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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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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A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
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Socially, a journalist ranks somewhere between the madam of a whorehouse and a bartender. but spiritually he ranks with Galileo, for he knows the world is round.
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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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Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
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He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
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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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As an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
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When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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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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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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Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
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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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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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