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Ben Hecht Biography

Ben Hecht /ˈhɛkt/ (February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write thirty-five books and some of the most entertaining screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films.

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Ben Hecht Quotes

There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die - their silence.

Death, Die, Old Friends, Silence, Stormy, Surprising

A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief. ” If he is wise he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining.

Allow, Ideas, Men, Wise, Yelling

Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It's just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different.

Castles, Toilet, Views, Window, Writing

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

Agony, Dream, Raucous, Valentine, Valentines Day, Written

Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent. The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.

Difference, Differences, Huffing, Men, Thousand, Way

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.

Fake People, Man, Men, Nearly, Reasons, Thinking

That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.

Atheism, Existence, Homage, Managed, Proof, Religions

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.

Effort, Games, Lure, Tremendous, Years

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.

Blessing, Magic, Money, People, Receiving

Socially, a journalist ranks somewhere between the madam of a whorehouse and a bartender. but spiritually he ranks with Galileo, for he knows the world is round.

Knows, Political, Politics, Ranks, World

I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops. I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me.

Cities, Jail, Police, Sleep, Stations, Works

Out of the seventy movies I've written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.

Products, Seventies, Seventy, Ten, Waste

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.

Directors, Distinction, Men, Movie, Movies, Producer

In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.

Deceit, Desire, Lies, Lying, Peace, Satisfying

Love's the only thing I've thought of or read about since I was knee-high. That's what I always dreamed of, of meeting somebody and falling in love. And when that remarkable thing happened, I was going to recite poetry to her for hours about how her heart's an angel's wing and her hair the strings of a heavenly harp. Instead I got drunk and hollered at her and called her a harpy.

Angel, Fall, Hollered, Hours, Instead, Love

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

Art, Kowtow, Mass, Rule, World

The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type - as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer - an insipid one or a clumsy one - but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years - as producers did - who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.

Children, Eye, Girl, Keeps, Phenomenon, Writers

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.

Adventure, Art, Dared, Movie, Synonym

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.

Book, Civilization, Dream, Pretty, Seen

The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.

Cultured, Eruption, Mind, People, Trash

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