Ben Hecht Quotes - Page 2

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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. 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Men, Differences, Fifty

  18 Copy quote

• 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. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.

  Ben Hecht

  Criticism, Dubious, News

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

  6 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

  4 Copy quote

• The factors that laid low so whooping and puissant an empire as the old Hollywood are many. I can think of a score, including the barbarian hordes of Television. But there is one that stands out for me in the post-mortem.... The factor had to do with the basis of movie-making: 'Who shall be in charge of telling the story.'

  Ben Hecht

  Thinking, Empires, Barbarians

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

  5 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Dark, Mind, Age

  6 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.

  6 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

  6 Copy 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

  Party, Greatness, Glowing

  19 Copy quote

• There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.

  Ben Hecht

  Intellectual, Age, Allies

  "A Guide for the Bedevilled". Book by Ben Hecht, 1944.

  4 Copy quote

• There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die - their silence.

  Ben Hecht

  Death, Silence, Old Friends

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Bible, Book, League

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

  11 Copy quote

• Love is a hole in the heart.

  Ben Hecht

  Love, Heart, Holes

  10 Copy quote

• The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.

  Ben Hecht

  People, Mind, Eruption

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

  18 Copy quote

• The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.

  Ben Hecht

  Honor, Dubious, Hollywood

  57 Copy quote

• They're a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time - and they're phonies, all of them. And I head the list...their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.

  Ben Hecht

  Kindness, Heart, Fighting

  "Nothing Sacred", 1937.

  6 Copy quote

• Out of the seventy movies I've written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.

  Ben Hecht

  Waste, Seventies, Products

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

  5 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.

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Movie, Men, Directors

  4 Copy quote

• I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.

  Ben Hecht

  Valentines Day, Dream, Agony

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  New York, White, Years

  "Angels Over Broadway", 1940.

  6 Copy quote

• He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.

  Ben Hecht

  Summer, Love Life, June

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Years, Games, Effort

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

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Movie, Art, Adventure

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Ben Hecht

  Australia, Bird, Kind

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

  9 Copy quote

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