Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.
If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You can start over any moment you choose.
I saw Hollywood born and I’ve seen it die.
After Theda Bara appeared in A Fool There Was, a vampire wave surged over the country. Women appeared in vampire gowns, pendant earrings, and even young girls were attempting to change from frank, open-eyed ingenues to the almond-eyed, carmine-lipped woman of subtlety and mystery.
It’s not the falling down that counts. It’s the getting up.
One of the great penalties those of us who live our lives in full view of the public must pay is the loss of that most cherished birthright of man’s, privacy.
Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.
I was forced to live far beyond my years when just a child, now I have reversed the order and I intend to remain young indefinitely.
You may have a fresh start anytime you choose.
I think Oscar Wilde wrote a poem about a robin who loved a white rose. He loved it so much that he pierced his breast and let his heart’s blood turn the white rose red. Maybe this sounds very sentimental, but for anybody who has loved a career as much as I’ve loved mine, there can be no short cuts.
Those who never make mistakes lose a great many chances to learn something.
The refined simplicity should develop out of the complex. It would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talkie instead of the other way around.