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Ben Hecht Quotes
1894–1964 United States
Ben Hecht (February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films.
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19 quotes
You're such a nice boy, what do you want to go off and get killed in the War for?
Miracle in the Rain (1956)
The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
I note that my New Yorker's clothes have become duller, and that his haberdashers' has dimmed from Charvet to washable nylon.
Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
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.
"The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people."
"A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it."
I was afraid you would think I was bragging.
Gibbons is a man full of pain and violence. On this night, there is a Witch's Sabbath in his heart. Storms are blowing his world to bits and great troubles are pounding him on a reef.
Angels Over Broadway (1940)
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.
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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.
Angels Over Broadway (1940)
The only place I felt at home was in your heart. You were the only light that didn't go out on me.
Angels Over Broadway (1940)
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.
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.
Nothing Sacred (1937)
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