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All the mistakes I ever made were when I wanted to say 'No' and said 'Yes'.

Moss Hart

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Moss Hart
Age: 57 †
Born: 1904
Born: October 24
Died: 1961
Died: December 20
Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
Writer
New York City
New York
Lifeboats
Mistakes
Mistake
Ever
Wanted
Made

More quotes by Moss Hart

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A sharp sense of the ironic can be the equivalent of the faith that moves mountains. Far more quicky than reason or logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.
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Boredom is the keynote of poverty - of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with - for where there is no money there is no change of any kind.
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New York is not a city to return to in defeat.
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Poor people know poor people, and rich people know rich people. It is one of the few things La Rochefoucauld did not say, but then La Rochefoucauld never lived in the Bronx.
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Playwriting, like begging in India, is an honorable but humbling profession.
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The theatre breeds its own kind of cruelty, and its sadism takes on a keener edge since it can be enjoyed under the innocent guise of critical judgment.
Moss Hart
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Boredom is the keynote of poverty — of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with — for where there is no money there is no change of any kind, not of scene or of routine. To be able to break out of its dark brown sameness.
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There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.
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The frivolity with which all theatrical activity is conducted has one consoling feature-there are no rules of behavior that apply regularly to any part of the theatre.
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There is nothing like tasting the grit of fear for rediscovering that the umbilical cord is made of piano wire.
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Julie Andrews has a wonderful British strength that makes you wonder why they lost India.
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A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.
Moss Hart
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Without vanity a writer's work is tepid, and he must accept his vanity as part of his stock in trade and live with it as one of the hazards of his profession.
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I have had the irreplaceable opportunity of learning my profession with the proper tools, the most important of which is not a pencil or a typewriter, but the necessary time to think before using them.
Moss Hart
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I have had many successes and many failures in my life. My successes have always been for different reasons, but my failures have always been for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.
Moss Hart
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The self-hatred that destroys is the waste of unfulfilled promise.
Moss Hart
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One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick.
Moss Hart
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Charity in the theater begins and ends with those who have a play opening within a week of one's own.
Moss Hart
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Far more quickly than reason and logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.
Moss Hart
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I have always understood the unbelieving look in the eyes of those whom success touches early - it is a look half fearful, as though the dream were still in the process of being dreamed and to move or to speak would shatter it.
Moss Hart