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The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.

Ben Hecht

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

Mad Secret World
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.
BEN HECHT

Between Curious Difference Good Mark Same Writer
Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.
BEN HECHT

Age Dark Mind
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.
BEN HECHT

Buzzing Clock Everywhere Hour Learn
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
BEN HECHT

Dubious Hollywood Honor
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 HECHT

Jobs Stars Writing
There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.
BEN HECHT

Death Friends Old Silence
Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent.
BEN HECHT

Differences Fifty Men
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.
BEN HECHT

Country White Years
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
Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
BEN HECHT

Humorous Moving Time
Love is a hole in the heart.
BEN HECHT

Heart Holes Love
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
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
I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
BEN HECHT

Brain Hollywood Sports

The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.

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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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