The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.

There is no such thing as realistic dialogue. If you [simply recorded] the real conversation of any people and played it back from the stage, it would be impossible to listen to. It would be redundant . . . . The good dialogue writer is the one who can give you the impression of real speech.

All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years.

I've been in on the beginning, the rise, peak, collapse and end of the talking picture.

The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.

[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.

There's nothing as real as money.