BEN HECHT

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

Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.

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

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.

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.

There's only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it.

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.

Love is a hole in the heart.

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.

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

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

In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.

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.

In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.

The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can't have both.

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.

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

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

How do you fight an idea—especially a new idea?

Since my boyhood, I have sought always to please, but out of a kindness in me, never out of fear or respect for what was in others.

Kindness, tolerance, integrity, modesty, generosity - these are attributes that events permit us. They are our holiday moods, and we are as proud of them as of the fine clothes we have hung away to wear on occasions.

Of the 60 movies I wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less.

There are millions of Americans who belong by nature in movie theaters as they belong at political rallies or in fortuneteller parlors and on the shoot-the-chutes. To these millions, the movies are a sort of boon - a gaudier version of religion.

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

I have lived in other cities but been inside of only one. I once wore all the windows of Chicago and all its doorways on a key ring. Salons, mansions, alleys, courtrooms, depots, factories, hotels, police cells, the lake front, the rooftops and the sidewalks were my haberdashery.