James Jones (left) Slyvia Beach, Thorton
Wilder and Alice B. Toklas
Dorothy Kilgallen
A very young Elmer Rice
Lou Rawls sings "Tobacco Road"
Millions upon millions of years ago, when
the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one
aspect of the world that dwarfed all others. It was a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent,
a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as pacific.
Over its brooding surface
immense winds swept back and forth, whipping the waters into towering waves that crashed down upon the world’s seacoasts,
tearing away rocks and eroding the land. In its dark bosom, strange life was beginning to form, minute at first, then gradually
of a structure now lost even to memory. Upon its farthest reaches birds with enormous wings came to rest, and then flew on.
Agitated by a moon stronger then than now, immense tides ripped across this tremendous ocean, keeping it in a state
of torment. Since no great amounts of sand had yet been built, the waters where they reached shore were universally dark,
black as nigh and fearful.
Scores of millions of years before man had risen from the shores of the ocean to perceive
its grandeur and to venture forth upon its turbulent waves, this eternal sea existed, larger than any other of the earth’s
features, vaster than the sister oceans combined, wild, terrifying in its immensity and imperative in its universal role.
How utterly vast it was! How its surges modified the very balance of the earth! How completely lonely it was, hidden
in the dark ness of night or burning in the dazzling power of a younger sun than ours.
At recurring intervals the
ocean grew cold. Ice piled up along its extremities, and so pulled vast amounts of water from the sea, so that the wandering
shoreline of the continents sometimes jutted miles farther out than before. Then, for a hundred thousand years, the ceaseless
ocean would tear at the exposed shelf of the continents, grinding rocks into sand and incubating new life.
Later,
the fantastic accumulations of ice would melt, setting cold waters free to join the heaving ocean, and the coasts of the continents
would lie submerged. Now the restless energy of the sea deposited upon the ocean bed layers of silt and skeletons and salt.
For a million years the ocean would build soil, and then the ice would return; the waters would draw away; and the land would
lie exposed. Winds from the north and south would howl across the empty seas and last stupendous waves upon the shattering
shore. Thus the ocean continued is alternate building and tearing down.
Master of life, guardian of the shorelines,
regulator of temperatures and heaving sculptor of mountains, the great ocean existed.
Excerpted
from Hawaii by James Michener
Janet
Flanner and Ernest
[Arthur Keats enters, closes the door] Cora Smith: If it's the last thing I do, I'll put you out of business.
There must be a law, even for lawyers. Arthur Keats: Of course you know the district attorney fooled you into that confession, don't you? And you fell
for it, both of you.
[small hrmph] Arthur Keats: He planned to get you working against
each other. Don't you see? Cora Smith: You bet I see.
[turning to Frank] Cora Smith: So when Sackett couldn't get anything
out of me, he started in on you, and right away you turned yellow. Arthur
Keats: Yellow? Yellow is a color you figure on in a murder, and nobody
figures it better than Kyle Sackett.
[to Frank] Arthur Keats: That was Sackett's trump card.
Once he tricked you into signing that complaint against her, he knew no power on earth could keep you
[to Cora] Arthur Keats: from turning on him.
[back
to Frank] Arthur Keats:
That way he gets you both. Cora Smith: If you knew all that, why didn't you stop me from confessing? Arthur
Keats: Oh, I tried. I tried, but nobody could've stopped you. However,
now that you've got it off your chest...
[moving to door, opening
it] Arthur Keats: Kennedy?
Ezra Liam Kennedy: Yes,
sir?
[enters] Arthur
Keats: [closes door] That confession Mrs. Smith signed. What did you do
with it? Ezra Liam Kennedy:
I gave it to Jimmy White to lock up in your safe like you told me to. Arthur
Keats: [opening door] That's all.
[Kennedy leaves, he closes door] Cora Smith: You mean he's not from the D.A.'s office? Frank
Chambers: He's a plainclothes dick if I ever saw one. Arthur Keats: He used to be a dick, but he's
not a dick anymore. He works for me now. He's my gumshoe man. With the district attorney using high-pressure tactics, I had
to fight fire with fire. Since you were due to spill the beans anyway, I figured you better do it to my man rather than to
Sackett's. Cora Smith:
Why you... Arthur Keats:
That's why I said we'd plead guilty, so as to stop everything cold in that courtroom before you blew your topper right there
and then. Frank Chambers: Then
the district attorney's got nothing against me. Arthur Keats: No, Frank, you're not even under arrest. Cora Smith: Oh, sure, he goes free, and I get tossed in for murder
and attempt. Arthur Keats: Unless...
unless you let me handle it. Cora Smith: Ha! Arthur Keats:
Listen, my girl, you're still in plenty of trouble, 'cause we don't know exactly what evidence Sackett's got against us. From
now on, you speak only when you're spoken to, and in that court tomorrow try to look as young and innocent as possible under
the circumstances. And remember I'm the only hope you've got.
Scene from The Postman Always
Rings Twice, written by Niven Busch
Excerpt: POZZO:
Stand back! (Vladimir and Estragon move away from Lucky. Pozzo jerks the rope. Lucky looks at Pozzo.)
Think, pig! (Pause. Lucky begins to dance.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Forward!
(Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Think!
During Lucky’s tirade the others react as follows.
1) Vladimir
and Estragon all attention, Pozzo dejected and disgusted.
2) Vladimir
and Estragon begin to protest, Pozzo’s sufferings increase.
3) Vladimir
and Estragon attentive again, Pozzo more and more agitated and groaning.
4)
Vladimir and Estragon protest violently. Pozzo jumps up, pulls on the rope. General outcry. Lucky
pulls on the rope, staggers, shouts his text. All three throw themselves on Lucky who struggles and shouts his text.
LUCKY: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works
of Puncher and Wattmanof a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension
who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown
but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in
torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast
hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so
fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry
of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labors
of men that as a result of the labors unfinished of Testew and Cunard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for
reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattman it is established beyond all doubt that in view
of the labors of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established
what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the
strides of alimentation and defecation wastes and pines wastes and pines and concurrently simultaneously what is more for
reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling
swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn
summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicilline and succedanea in a word I resume flying gliding
golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely
concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell fades away I resume Fullham Clapham in a word
the dead loss per head since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce per head approximately
by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara
in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that
in the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light
the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running
water running fire the air is the same and then the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark
the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the
air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold on sea on land and in the air I resume for
reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on
on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull fading fading fading and concurrently simultaneously
what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas
alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned left unfinished
graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of
the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations) tennis . . . the stones
. . . so calm . . . Cunard . . . unfinished . . .
Beckett --Waiting for Godot
I The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning
mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels
nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office-buildings.
The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier
generations: the Post Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets of hulking old houses, factories with
stingy and sooted windows, wooden tenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but the clean towers
were thrusting them from the business center, and on the farther hills were shining new houses, homes—they seemed—for
laughter and tranquillity.
Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiseless engine. These
people in evening clothes were returning from an all-night rehearsal of a Little Theater play, an artistic adventure considerably
illuminated by champagne. Below the bridge curved a railroad, a maze of green and crimson lights. The New York Flyer boomed
past, and twenty lines of polished steel leaped into the glare.
In one of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated
Press were closing down. The telegraph operators wearily raised their celluloid eye-shades after a night of talking with Paris
and Peking. Through the building crawled the scrubwomen, yawning, their old shoes slapping. The dawn mist spun away. Cues
of men with lunch-boxes clumped toward the immensity of new factories, sheets of glass and hollow tile, glittering shops where
five thousand men worked beneath one roof, pouring out the honest wares that would be sold up the Euphrates and across the
veldt. The whistles rolled out in greeting a chorus cheerful as the April dawn; the song of labor in a city built—it
seemed—for giants.
II
There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man
who was beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in that residential district of Zenith known as
Floral Heights.
His name was George F.Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing
in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people
could afford to pay.
His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was babyish in slumber, despite
his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks
were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous,
extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm,
two respectable grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. Yet Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy
child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.
For years the fairy child had come to him. Where
others saw but Georgie Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the darkness beyond mysterious groves.
When at last he could slip away from the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends, sought to follow,
but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so
eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for him, that they would sail—
Rumble and
bang of the milk-truck.
Babbitt moaned, turned over, struggled back toward his dream. He could see only her face
now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed the basement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfully
into a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused,
his stomach constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar and irritating rattle of some one cranking
a Ford: snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist,Babbitt cranked with the unseen driver, with him waited
through taut hours for the roar of the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again began the infernal
patient snap-ah-ah—a round, flat sound, a shivering cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till
the rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was he released from the panting tension. He glanced once
at his favorite tree, elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a drug. He who had been a boy
very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.
He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty.
III
It was the
best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime,
intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Babbitt was proud of being awakened by such a rich device. Socially it was
almost as creditable as buying expensive cord tires.
He sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but
he lay and detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them.
The evening before, he had played poker at Vergil Gunch’s till midnight, and after such holidays he was irritable before
breakfast. It may have been the tremendous home-brewed beer of the prohibition era and the cigars to which that beer enticed
him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine, bold man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers,
and of suggestions not to smoke so much.
From the bedroom beside the sleeping-porch, his wife’s detestably
cheerful “Time to get up, Georgie boy,” and the itchy sound, the brisk and scratchy sound, of combing hairs out
of a stiff brush.
He grunted; he dragged his thick legs, in faded baby-blue pajamas, from under the khaki blanket;
he sat on the edge of the cot, running his fingers through his wild hair, while his plump feet mechanically felt for his slippers.
He looked regretfully at the blanket—forever a suggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a camping
trip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, gorgeous cursing, virile flannel shirts.
He creaked
to his feet, groaning at the waves of pain which passed behind his eyeballs. Though he waited for their scorching recurrence,
he looked blurrily out at the yard. It delighted him, as always; it was the neat yard of a successful business man of Zenith,
that is, it was perfection, and made him also perfect. He regarded the corrugated iron garage. For the three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth
time in a year he reflected, “No class to that tin shack. Have to build me a frame garage. But by golly it’s the
only thing on the place that isn’t up-to-date!” While he stared he thought of a community garage for his acreage
development, Glen Oriole. He stopped puffing and jiggling. His arms were akimbo. His petulant, sleep-swollen face was set
in harder lines. He suddenly seemed capable, an official, a man to contrive, to direct, to get things done.
On
the vigor of his idea he was carried down the hard, clean, unused-looking hall into the bathroom.
Though the house
was not large it had, like all houses on Floral Heights, an altogether royal bathroom of porcelain and glazed tile and metal
sleek as silver. The towel-rack was a rod of clear glass set in nickel. The tub was long enough for a Prussian Guard, and
above the set bowl was a sensational exhibit of tooth-brush holder, shaving-brush holder, soap-dish, sponge-dish, and medicine-cabinet,
so glittering and so ingenious that they resembled an electrical instrument-board. But the Babbitt whose god was Modern Appliances
was not pleased. The air of the bathroom was thick with the smell of a heathen toothpaste. “Verona been at it again!
’Stead of sticking to Lilidol, like I’ve re-peat-ed-ly asked her, she’s gone and gotten some confounded
stinkum stuff that makes you sick!”
The bath-mat was wrinkled and the floor was wet. (His daughter Verona
eccentrically took baths in the morning, now and then.) He slipped on the mat, and slid against the tub. He said “Damn!”
Furiously he snatched up his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerent slapping of the unctuous brush,
furiously he raked his plump cheeks with a safety-razor. It pulled. The blade was dull. He said, “Damn—oh—oh—damn
it!”
He hunted through the medicine-cabinet for a packet of new razor-blades (reflecting, as invariably,
“Be cheaper to buy one of these dinguses and strop your own blades,”) and when he discovered the packet, behind
the round box of bicarbonate of soda, he thought ill of his wife for putting it there and very well of himself for not saying
“Damn.” But he did say it, immediately afterward, when with wet and soap-slippery fingers he tried to remove the
horrible little envelope and crisp clinging oiled paper from the new blade.
Then there was the problem, oft-pondered,
never solved, of what to do with the old blade, which might imperil the fingers of his young. As usual, he tossed it on top
of the medicine-cabinet, with a mental note that some day he must remove the fifty or sixty other blades that were also temporarily
piled up there. He finished his shaving in a growing testiness increased by his spinning head- ache and by the emptiness in
his stomach. When he was done, his round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water, he reached for a
towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them—his
own face-towel, his wife’s, Verona’s, Ted’s, Tinka’s, and the lone bath-towel with the huge welt of
initial. Then George F.Babbitt did a dismaying thing. He wiped his face on the guest-towel! It was a pansy-embroidered
trifle which always hung there to indicate that the Babbitts were in the best Floral Heights society. No one had ever dared
to. No guest had ever dared to. Guests secretively took a corner of the nearest regular towel.
He was raging, “By
golly, here they go and use up all the towels, every doggone one of ’em, and they use ’em and get ’em all
wet and sopping, and never put out a dry one for me—of course, I’m the goat!—and then I want one and—
I’m the only person in the doggone house that’s got the slightest doggone bit of consideration for other people
and thoughtfulness and consider there may be others that may want to use the doggone bathroom after me and consider—”
He was pitching the chill abominations into the bath-tub, pleased by the vindictiveness of that desolate flapping
sound; and in the midst his wife serenely trotted in, observed serenely, “Why Georgie dear, what are you doing? Are
you going to wash out the towels? Why, you needn’t wash out the towels. Oh, Georgie, you didn’t go and use the
guest-towel, did you?”
It is not recorded that he was able to answer.
For the first time in weeks
he was sufficiently roused by his wife to look at her.
Excerpted from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Terry Southern
The Great F. Scott
“Well, I grew
here (On Overlook Avenue in St. Paul) I’ve lived here my entire life, so, yes, I knew the Fitzgerald’s. There
were several groupings of them that lived about the neighborhood. They were never wealthy you know, people say they were,
but they weren’t. I think, perhaps, the grandmother may have had some money. I remember, and I will never forget, on
one Sunday, we were in church, I was very young, just a girl, and in walks Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, just walks in
to the middle of the service as bold as day. He was Roman Catholic, you know, so we were a bit surprised to see him at our
service, to say the least. You know, I mean things were just so different in those days. He strolled in wearing a long top
coat and galoshes, if you know what those are…rubber snow boots…they had metal buckles on them and his weren’t
snapped so when he walked, they sort of jingled and jangled. Everything just stopped. He was famous by
then so at the service everyone knew who he was, well we all knew him anyway, and he was drunk. He strolled
up to the front of the church, stopped, turned, put his hands on his hips, looked over the congregation as though it were
a military inspection and said “Carry on” and then walked out, his boot buckles jingling and jangling as he went”
Zelda
Fitzgerald's daughter in the 1950s
He has honor if he holds himself to
an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so. Walter Lippmann
We write frankly and fearlessly
but then we "modify" before we print. Mark twain, Life on the Mississippi
All a writer has to do to get a woman
is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac. Saul Bellow
Norman Mailer runs for Mayor of New York
..........and Upton Sinclair runs for Governor
of California
A life spent making mistakes is not
only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. George Bernard Shaw
I have a theory that the truth is
never told during the nine-to-five hours. Hunter S. Thompson
I do not like to get the news, because
there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. Ogden Nash
A slave is one who waits for someone
to come and free him. Ezra Pound
Any reviewer who expresses rage and
loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Kurt Vonnegut
..and now a few thoughts from the perpetually angry Henry
Miller
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without
benefit of experience. Henry Miller
An artist is always alone -
if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. Henry Miller
Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points
the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it
defeats itself. Henry Miller
Back of every creation, supporting
it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.
Henry Miller
Chaos is the
score upon which reality is written. Henry Miller
Develop an interest
in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures,
beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. Henry Miller
Every
man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race. Henry Miller
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. Henry Miller
Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action,
and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil. Henry Miller
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire. Henry Miller
I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich
an expression of life as growth. Henry Miller
In the beginning was
the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor. Henry Miller
Instead
of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?' Henry Miller
It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand,
a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir. Henry Miller
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously. Henry
Miller
Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only
adds to the murk. Henry Miller
One of the reasons why so few of
us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses. Henry Miller
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Henry
Miller
Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now,
anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip. Henry Miller
Sin,
guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Henry Miller
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely
aware. Henry Miller
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except
to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it
is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary. Henry Miller
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own
or has refused to face them. Henry Miller
The moment one gives
close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
Henry Miller
The only thing we never
get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love. Henry Miller
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
Henry Miller
The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime,
but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. Henry Miller
The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not
recognized itself. Henry Miller
The
real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way. Henry Miller
The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts. Henry Miller
There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy. Henry Miller
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of
staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in. Henry Miller
Until
we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing. Henry Miller
"My
poetry, I think, has become the way of my giving out what music is within me." Countee Cullen
Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last
herd of fantastic bravos. Ben Hecht
Hollywood held this double lure
for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle. Ben Hecht
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. Ben Hecht
I have written a raucous valentine to
a poet's dream and agony. Ben Hecht
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. Ben Hecht
I'm
a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain. Ben Hecht
In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel. Ben Hecht
The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow
to the elite; you can't have both. Ben Hecht
A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best
formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself . . .
so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe. Eugene O'Neill
"it's nearly time we had a little less respect for the dead, an' a
little more regard for the living." - Juno Boyle, Act II
