Quote: I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is 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. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: 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 -- as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: 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]
Quote: 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. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: 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. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: 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]
Quote: Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: I'm a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: Listen, little boy. In this business, there's only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: Love is a hole in the heart. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: 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]
Quote: There's only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: 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]
Quote: 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]
Quote: 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. [Ben Hecht]
Quote: I'm a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain. [Ben Hecht]