I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.
BEN HECHTMovies 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.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent.
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Love is a hole in the heart.
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Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.
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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.
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Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.
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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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There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
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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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Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
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Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
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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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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.
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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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There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.
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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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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.
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I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
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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.
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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.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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I discovered early in my movie work that a movies never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
BEN HECHT