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.

To say goodbye is to die a little.

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.

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.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.

Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is either crazy or sober.