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 HECHTChicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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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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Love is a hole in the heart.
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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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The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
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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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I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
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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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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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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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There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
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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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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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Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
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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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Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
BEN HECHT