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

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

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night! — Herman J. 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

The amount of quaint, authentic, rustic charm varies inversely with the pounds per square inch of water pressure in the shower. — Frank Mankiewicz

A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word 'BUT' which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservative - before they tell you. Thus: 'I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but ... (a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut). — Frank Mankiewicz

You know it's hard to hear what a bearded man is saying. He can't speak above a whisker. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

Ignore everything a politician says before the word but. — Frank Mankiewicz

If people don't sit at Chaplin's feet, he goes out and stands where they are sitting. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

Mankiewicz was a brilliant director. — Richard Widmark

There's nothing as real as money. — 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

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

We are a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk.We are the original displaced personalities, concentrated gatherings of neurotics, egomaniacs, emotional misfits and precocious children. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

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

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

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

Quintana's christening was in 1966, this Christian Dior show was two years later, 1968: 1966 and 1968 were a world removed from each other in the political and cultural life of the United States but they were for women who presented themselves a certain way the same time. It was a way of looking, it was a way of being. It was a period. What became of that way of looking, that way of being, that time, that period? What became of the women smoking cigarettes in their Chanel suits and their David Webb bracelets, what became of Diana holding the champagne flute and the one of Sara Mankiewicz's Minton plates? What became of Sara Mankiewicz's Minton plates? — Joan Didion

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

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

There are millions to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let thisget around. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

There, but for the grace of God, goes God. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

Imagine
the whole world wired to Harry Cohn's ass! — Herman J. Mankiewicz

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

In a novel, the hero can lay ten girls and marry a virgin for the finish. In a movie, that is not allowed. The villain can lay anybody he wants, have as much fun and as he wants cheating, stealing, getting rich, and whipping servants. But you have to shoot him in the end. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

John Connally's conversion to the GOP raised the intellectual level of both parties. — Frank Mankiewicz