Managing Editor: That's rotten. 'Costello slaying starts gang war.' That's what I want. Copy Chief: I'm working on that angle.... I've got four men on it. Managing Editor: Four. You'll need forty men on this story for the next five years. You know what's happening. This town is up for the grabs, get me. You know Costello was the last of the old- fashioned gang leaders. There's a new crew coming out, and every guy that's got money enough to buy a gun is going to try to step in his place. You see, they'll be shooting each other like rabbits for the control of the booze business. You get it. It'll be just like war. That's it--war. You put that in the lead. War--gang war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was born to be an editor, I always edit everything. I edit my room at least once a week. Hotels are made for me. I can change a ...hotel room so thoroughly that even its proprietor doesn't recognize it.... I edit people's clothes, dressing them infallibly in the right lines.... I change everyone's coiffure--except those that please me--and these I gaze at with such satisfaction that I become suspect, I edit people's tones of voice, their laughter, their words. I change their gestures, their photographs. I change the books I read, the music I hear ... It's this incessant, unavoidable observation, this need to distinguish and impose, that has made me an editor. I can't make things. I can only revise what has been made.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can ste...p out of a railway station--the Gare D'Orsay--and see, simultaneously, the chief enchantments: the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees--nearly everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a... life is to go on asking them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Chief Inspector Dreyfus: What about the maid? Inspector Clouseau: The maid?... Chief Inspector Dreyfus: Was he jealous of her, too? He strangled her. Inspector Clouseau: It's possible that his intended victim was a man and he made a mistake. Chief Inspector Dreyfus: A mistake? In a nudist camp? Inspector Clouseau: Nobody's perfect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Inspector Clouseau: Do I detect something in your voice that says I am in disfavor with you? Chief Inspector Dreyfus: Yes. I ...wish you were dead. Inspector Clouseau: Well, of course, you are entitled to your opinion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Inspector Clouseau: How can a blind man be a lookout? Chief Inspector Dreyfus: How can an idiot be a policeman? Answer me tha...t! Inspector Clouseau: It's very simple. All he has to do is enlist.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy:Min the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of float...ing among cloud-pictures.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ben Guarino: Whad'a we goin' to do about these machine guns? Chief Detective: What can we do about them? There's no law again...st manufacturing them, just against havin' them. They can't get 'em in one state, they go across the border and get 'em in another. These fellows bootleg machine guns like they bootleg booze. Ben Guarino: Yeah, they better do somethin' about that, because with these toys to play with what happened before will look like a tea party.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Police officer: Say chief. This fellow Comante.... Public's interested in him. He's a colorful character. Chief Detective: Co...lorful. What color is a trawling louse? Say listen, that's the attitude of too many morons in this country. They think these big hoodlums are some sort of demagogues. Whad a they do about a guy like Comante, they sentimentalize him. Romance. Make jokes about 'em. They had some excuse for glorifying our old Western badmen. They met in the middle of the street at high noon waiting for each other to draw. But these fiends sneak up, shoot a guy in the back, and then run away. Colorful ... When I think what goes on in the minds of these lice, I wanna vomit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »