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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.

Ben Hecht

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.
BEN HECHT

Fighting Heart Kindness
Love is a hole in the heart.
BEN HECHT

Heart Holes Love
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.
BEN HECHT

Men Wise Yelling
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.
BEN HECHT

Blessing Money People
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.
BEN HECHT

Fog Light Nice
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.
BEN HECHT

Intellectual People Writing
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.
BEN HECHT

Effort Games Years
There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.
BEN HECHT

Death Friends Old Silence
Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
BEN HECHT

Fate Moving People
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.
BEN HECHT

Business Reading Time
I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.
BEN HECHT

Agony Day Dream Valentines
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
BEN HECHT

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

Art Mass World
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.
BEN HECHT

Christmas Criticism Dubious News Praise
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.
BEN HECHT

Director Flop Geniuses Head Producer Spear
Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.
BEN HECHT

Day Love Men Valentines

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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