The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type - as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer - an insipid one or a clumsy one - but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years - as producers did - who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.

I discovered early in my movie work that a movies 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.

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.

Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women's hair rhapsodically described, women's faces acclaimed in odelike language.

A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.

There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.