“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.”

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.

The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.

He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.

They’re a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time – and they’re phonies, all of them. And I head the list…their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.

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.

There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.

Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.

The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.

Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.

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

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.

Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.

The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can’t have both.

People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.

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.

I have known a number of Don Juans who were good studs and who cavorted between the sheets without a psychiatrist to guide them. But most of the busy love-makers I knew were looking for masculinity rather than practicing it. They were fellows of dubious lust.

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting – for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.

As the bells ring out the joys of Christmas, may we also be alert for the final trumpet that will announce His return, when we shall always be with Him.

Grandchildren now don’t write a thank you for the Christmas presents.

There are three days that are really slow for restaurants – Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.

I eat everything I want on Christmas day.

I really don’t watch what I eat. It’s not like you have #‎ Christmas every day!