“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.”

The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.

Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent.

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.

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.

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.

I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.

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.

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.

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.

I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.

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.

Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.

A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.

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.

In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.

In a Game Community, the rules and officials decide if the players are good enough to play. If not, they change players. In a Play Community, the players decide if the game is fun enough to play. If not, they change rules.

Investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.

I crack jokes and play games and that’s really more my nature than being cold.

You don’t see me in Los Angeles a lot. I go back home. Because I can’t play the game. I can’t – my tolerance – I know I’m getting old; I’ll be 50 this year. And you know how I know I’m getting old? ‘Cause my tolerance level is low.

Lack of patience is probably the most common reason for losing a game, or drawing games that should have been won.

It’s not life or death it’s a game and at the end of the game there is going to be a winner and a loser.

A draw may be the beautiful and logical result of fine attacks and parries; and the public ought to appreciate such games, in contrast, of course, to the fear-and-laziness draws.

This morning I was standing in the shower and thought how I was sick of losing and how it was about time I had a big game.