Joseph Mankiewicz Quotes & Sayings

All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Freedom is an illusion, but a valuable one. — Skinner

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

[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

I'm a schoolteacher. That's even worse than being an intellectual. Schoolteachers are not only comic, they're often cold and hungry in this richest land on earth. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Please don't look at me as if you had a source of income other than your salary. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

I'm not biting my fingernails.
I'm biting my knuckles.
I finished the fingernails months ago. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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

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. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

There's nothing as real as money. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

I am a critic - as essential to the theatre as ants to a picnic. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Abel wanted a traditional marriage with a traditional wife. For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He's attracted to independent women. "He's like an exotic bird collector," she said. "He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage. — Trevor Noah

The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart. — Plutarch

Every screenwriter worthy of the name has already directed his film when he has written his script. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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

Patience. I colored patience gray, hung over with black clouds. I colored hope yellow, just like the sun we could see for a few short morning hours. Too soon the sun rose high in the sky & disappeared from view, leaving us bereft and staring at blue. — V.C. Andrews

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions. — William Shakespeare

Models eat. They're crazy about moderation, but they eat. There's this feeling that all models are into drugs or drinking or whatever, but I've got to say, 99% of the girls I work with are the healthiest people I know. Of course, as humans, we're not going to eat salads and organic food all the time. — Chrissy Teigen

So many people know me.
I wish I did.
I wish someone would tell me about me. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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. — Joseph L. Mankiewicz

We pass for what we are. — Ralph Waldo Emerson