Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
BEN HECHTCriticism 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.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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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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The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
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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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As an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
BEN HECHT -
I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
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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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I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
BEN HECHT -
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 -
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
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There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
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The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can’t have both.
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Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
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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 -
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.
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Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
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People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
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Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
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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.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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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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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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That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
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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.
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Love is a hole in the heart.
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He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
BEN HECHT