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

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.

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.

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.

I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.

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.

Love is a hole in the heart.

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.

In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.