Ben Hecht Quotes

Quotes about:

• 

  Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.

  Ben Hecht

  Love, Valentines Day, Men

  "A Child of the Century".

  55 Copy quote

• Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It's just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different.

  Ben Hecht

  Writing, Views, Castles

  12 Copy 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

  Time, Business, Reading

  Ben Hecht (1954). “A child of the century”, Signet

  15 Copy quote

• I'll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.

  Ben Hecht

  Mad, Secret, World

  Ben Hecht (1924). “Erik Dorn”, p.99, Library of Alexandria

  11 Copy quote

• In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.

  Ben Hecht

  Lying, Desire, Deceit

  8 Copy 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

  Fake People, Men, Thinking

  Ben Hecht (1954). “A child of the century”, Signet

  14 Copy quote

• Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.

  Ben Hecht

  Justice, Diversity, Safety

  41 Copy quote

• I'm a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.

  Ben Hecht

  Sports, Brain, Hollywood

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Nice, Light, Fog

  0 Copy quote

• Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.

  Ben Hecht

  Time, Humorous, Moving

  "Elegy for Wonderland". Esquire Magazine, March 1959.

  58 Copy quote

• A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.

  Ben Hecht

  Men, Stupidest, Connected

  "A Child of the Century: The Autobiography of Ben Hecht". Book by Ben Hecht, 1954.

  3 Copy 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

  Art, World, Mass

  7 Copy quote

• The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type - as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer - an insipid one or a clumsy one - but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years - as producers did - who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.

  Ben Hecht

  Girl, Children, Eye

  "Elegy for Wonderland" by Ben Hecht, Esquire Magazine, March 1959.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Political, World, Politics

  1 Copy quote

• Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.

  Ben Hecht

  Loyalty, Men, Giving

  Ben Hecht (1954). “A child of the century”, Signet

  0 Copy quote

• That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.

  Ben Hecht

  Atheism, Proof, Existence

  Ben Hecht (1954). “A child of the century”, Signet

  0 Copy quote

• 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. 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

  Stars, Jobs, Writing

  "Let's Make the Hero a MacArthur". Book by Ben Hecht, 1998.

  0 Copy quote

• Love's the only thing I've thought of or read about since I was knee-high. That's what I always dreamed of, of meeting somebody and falling in love. And when that remarkable thing happened, I was going to recite poetry to her for hours about how her heart's an angel's wing and her hair the strings of a heavenly harp. Instead I got drunk and hollered at her and called her a harpy.

  Ben Hecht

  Love, Fall, Heart

  0 Copy quote

• Love is a hole in the heart.

  Ben Hecht

  Love, Heart, Holes

  3 Copy quote

• I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops. 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

  Sleep, Cities, Jail

  3 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Numbers, Lust, Juan

  Ben Hecht (1954). “A child of the century”, Signet

  0 Copy 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

  Men, Envy, Guilt

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Christian, Art, War

  Ben Hecht (1964). “Letters from Bohemia”

  3 Copy quote

• 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 - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.

  Ben Hecht

  Writing, People, Intellectual

  16 Copy quote

• People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.

  Ben Hecht

  Sex, Political Opinions, People

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

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