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

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.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art.

My art became very public.

Riding a race bike is an art - a thing that you do because you feel something inside.

The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

We have often been attracted to the story of the other, the outcast. And he and I just loved working together, so it just kept happening, and our relationship is completely bound up with our work. We enjoy each other's art.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.