The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can’t have both.
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.
He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
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.
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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.
Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
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.
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
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.
Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.
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.
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.
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.
Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
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.
There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.