As an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
BEN HECHTI’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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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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Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.
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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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He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
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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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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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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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The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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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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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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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.
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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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I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
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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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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 see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life’s hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are.
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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.
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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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Love is a hole in the heart.
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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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People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
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The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them.
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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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In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
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Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
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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