Quotes

Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

In two words: im-possible.

My wife's hands are very beautiful. I'm going to have a bust made of them.

Include me out.

Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.

When you're a star, you have to take the bitter with the sour.

If you can't give me your word of honor, will you give me your promise?

What we need now is some new, fresh clichés.

[on his longtime friend and partner, Louis B. Mayer] The reason so many people turned up at his funeral is this: they wanted to make sure he was dead.

Every director bites the hand that lays the golden egg.

Too caustic? To hell with the costs, we'll make the picture anyway.

A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.

Flashbacks are a thing of the past.

A hospital is no place to be sick.

I don't care if my pictures never make a dime, so long as everyone keeps coming to see them.

I'll give you a definite maybe.

I read part of it all the way through.

This new atom bomb is dynamite.

You've got to take the bull by the teeth.

Don't talk to me while I'm interrupting.

Our comedies are not to be laughed at.

Tell me, how did you love my picture?

I never liked you, and I always will.

Don't pay any attention to the critics; don't even ignore them.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!

I never put on a pair of shoes until I've worn them five years.

The scene is dull. Tell him to put more life into his dying.

I was always an independent producer, even when I had partners.

Go see it and see for yourself why you shouldn't see it.

I'd hire the devil himself if he'd write me a good story.

A producer shouldn't get ulcers; he should give them.

For your information, I would like to ask a question.

I may not be always right, but I'm never wrong.

This makes me so sore it gets my dandruff up.

When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you.

A bachelor's life is no life for a single man.

It's more than magnificent; it's mediocre.

[on Fredric March] I'm overpaying him, but he's worth it.

Color television! Bah, I won't believe it until I see it in black and white.

When everybody's happy with the rushes, the picture's always a stinker.

We'd do anything for each other; we'd even cut each other's throats for each other.

We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.

Why should people go out and pay to see bad movies when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

[upon visiting the set of Dead End (1937), a film about life amid the grinding poverty of a New York City slum] Why do directors always try to make slums so dirty? Clean it up.

. . . We've all passed a lot of water since then.

Never make forecasts, especially about the future.

I don't think anyone should write his autobiography until after he's dead.

[on William Wyler's films] I made them -- Willy only directed then.

[on Mary Pickford] It took longer to make one of Mary's contracts than it did to make one of Mary's pictures.