 Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. |
| When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. |
| I certainly admire people who do things. |
| The moment a man begins to talk about technique that's proof that he is fresh out of ideas. |
| Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already. |
| Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic. |
| He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. |
| I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better take one along that worked. |
| A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. |
| The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture. |
| The streets were dark with something more than night. |
| It is not a fragrant world. |
| If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come. |
| The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers. |
| Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency. |
| When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split. |
| She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. |
| I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday. |
| Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl's clothes off. |
| The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business. |
