Joseph L. Mankiewicz Quotes
-
And Kate Hepburn-God, she's beautiful, God, she plays golf well, God, she can get anyone in the world on the phone, God, she knows what to do all the time, God, she wears clothes well.
→ -
In my last two years in high school, my face was pocked with pimples, I stammered when I spoke; if I made a mistake, I blushed furiously, and when nervous, as I was in the company of girls, I perspired freely.
→ -
I am a critic - as essential to the theatre as ants to a picnic.
→ -
I've been in on the beginning, the rise, peak, collapse and end of the talking picture.
→ -
Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.
→ -
So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.
→ -
Every screenwriter worthy of the name has already directed his film when he has written his script.
→ -
I'm not biting my fingernails. I'm biting my knuckles. I finished the fingernails months ago.
→ -
[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.
→ -
The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.
→ -
I got a job at Metro and went in to see Louis Mayer, who told me he wanted me to be a producer. I said I wanted to write and direct. He said, "No, you have to produce first, you have to crawl before you can walk." Which is as good a definition of producing as I ever heard.
→ -
There's nothing as real as money.
→ -
All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years.
→ -
Please don't look at me as if you had a source of income other than your salary.
→ -
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.
→
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
- Born: February 11, 1909
- Died: February 5, 1993
- Occupation: Film director