Love is a hole in the heart.

There's only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it.

Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.

Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.

I'm a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.

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

In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.

Love is a hole in the heart.

People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.

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.

Listen, little boy. In this business, there's only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it.

Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.

I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is 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.

In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.

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

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.

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.

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.

Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.

A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.

I have lived in other cities but been inside of only one. I once wore all the windows of Chicago and all its doorways on a key ring. Salons, mansions, alleys, courtrooms, depots, factories, hotels, police cells, the lake front, the rooftops and the sidewalks were my haberdashery.

In pre-movie days, the business of peddling lies about life was spotty and unorganized. It was carried on by the cheaper magazines, dime novels, the hinterland preachers and whooping politicians.

Of the 60 movies I wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less.

Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland, there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit and talent... 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.

Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche.

The German mass murder of the Jews... brought my Jewishness to the surface.

There are millions of Americans who belong by nature in movie theaters as they belong at political rallies or in fortuneteller parlors and on the shoot-the-chutes. To these millions, the movies are a sort of boon - a gaudier version of religion.

What better is there to sigh for than happiness, yesterday's or tomorrow's.

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.

Time is a circus always packing up and moving away.

There is hardly one in three of us who live in the cities who is not sick with unused self.

I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when lifes hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things nicer than they are.

There’s a thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die—their silence. For a while an echo stays in your ear. You hear a laugh, a knowing phrase or two, a certain quality of enunciation. Then, nothing. Another death takes place—voices.

The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.

Thank you to all for your prayers and good wishes. It gave me the strength to persevere and warmed my heart.

Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

A man must be strong in that profession, he must have vigor of body and mind, yet I am all out of breath if I walk up a hill; I have not the heart to crush even a fly.

Well, after I had the heart attack, it was a very simple choice. What the doctor told me I did and I did it religiously. I ate nothing but lean turkey breast or chicken breast or a piece of fish that was very lean. I mean I stayed away from everything.

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can't have.

The heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.

When you know something in your heart, you better not be quiet about it. You better speak out about it.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.

There is no persuasiveness more effectual than the transparency of a single heart, of a sincere life.