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Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women's hair rhapsodically described, women's faces acclaimed in odelike language.

Ben Hecht

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Ben Hecht
Age: 71 †
Born: 1893
Born: February 28
Died: 1964
Died: April 18
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Hear
Stamping
Lasts
Acclaimed
Last
Excites
Faces
Described
Language
Ground
Place
Poetry
Seems
Hair
Women
Television

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That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
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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.
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Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.
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Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
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I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life's hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are.
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Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.
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People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
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The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite you can't have both.
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The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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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.
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In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
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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.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
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Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
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He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
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The factors that laid low so whooping and puissant an empire as the old Hollywood are many. I can think of a score, including the barbarian hordes of Television. But there is one that stands out for me in the post-mortem.... The factor had to do with the basis of movie-making: 'Who shall be in charge of telling the story.'
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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.
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Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him. The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop.
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Love is a hole in the heart.
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