The wise screen writer is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn't take things too much to heart. He ...should have a touch of cynicism, but only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to Hollywood as he is to himself. He should do the best he can without straining at it. He should be scrupulously honest about his work, but he should not expect scrupulous honesty in return. He won't get it. And when he has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile, because for all he knows he may want to go back.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, that more time is allowed for the one than the other, and hence dif...ferent faculties are required for, and different objects attained by each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning; he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be quickness and facility of perception--for the other, patience of soul and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers. He, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say upon any one point that has not yet been touched upon before, or who by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow; the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Speaking thick, which nature made his blemish, Became the accents of the valiant;... For those that could speak low and tardily Would turn their own perfection to abuse To seem like him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English Theatre so much as a Ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody S...hirt. A Spectre has very often saved a Play, though he has done nothing but stalked across the Stage, or rose through a Cleft of it, and sunk again without speaking one Word.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Roughly speaking, the President of the United States knows what his job is. Constitution and custom spell it out, for him as well ...as for us. His wife has no such luck. The First Lady has no rules; rather each new woman must make her own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of depar...ture which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what doe...s he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a man's parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »