Ben Hecht Quotes

Craft is everything.

You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better.

I always try to write the best I can.

To be a good draftsman was to me a blessing.

What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry.

I don't care if you're doing haute cuisine or burgers and pizza, just do it right.

As writers, it is our job not only to imagine, but to witness.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

Writing a song is actually quite easy. Writing a good one is very, very difficult.

Songs are not better just because they're emotionally honest. To write a song well, you have to put some work into it and grind it out.

On a good day I write, all day.

Acting is easier - writing is more creative. The lazy man vies with the industrious.

What interests me about clocks is that everything is hand-made, and yet to the person looking at the clock, something magical is happening that cannot be explained unless you are the clockmaker.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I've lost track of the number of people who want to be writers but never actually write anything. Talking about writing, dreaming about writing, can be very fun, but it won't get a book written. You've got to write.

You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

To write, you need to find what you love.

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

When something is well-crafted, you know it, and the enjoyment comes from experiencing it.

For me, whatever you write about should be worthy of your attention, worthy of your gifts. That's very important.

There's nothing more special than intellect and labour that makes painting work. There's no magic there; it's information, and it's work.