Ben Hecht Quotes

Chicago Is A Sort Of Journalistic Yellowstone Park, Offering Haven To A Last Herd Of Fantastic Bravos.

Despite All Our Toil And Progress, The Art Of Medicine Still Falls Somewhere Between Trout Casting And Spook Writing.

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.

Innocent People Can Get Into Terrible Jams, Too. One False Move And You're In Over Your Head.

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.

I Have Known A Handful Of Producers Who Actually Were Equal Or Superior To The Writers With Whom They Worked. These Producers Were A New Kind Of Nonwriting Writer Hatched By The Movies - As Australia Produced Wingless Birds. They Wrote Without Pencils Or Even Words. Using A Sort Of Mime-like Talent, They Could Make Up Things Like Writers.

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.

He Was In Love With Life As An Ant On A Summer Blade Of Grass.

In The Court Of The Movie Owner, None Criticized, None Doubted. And None Dared Speak Of Art. In The Owner's Mind Art Was A Synonym For Bankruptcy. The Movie Owners Are The Only Troupe In The History Of Entertainment That Has Never Been Seduced By The Adventure Of The Entertainment World.

Television Excites Me Because It Seems To Be The Last Stamping Ground Of Poetry, The Last Place Where I Hear Women's Hair Rhapsodically Described, Women's Faces Acclaimed In Odelike Language.

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.

People's Sex Habits Are As Well Known In Hollywood As Their Political Opinions, And Much Less Criticized.