Joseph L. Mankiewicz Quotes

“The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.”

— 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

“All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years.”

— Joseph L. Mankiewicz

“I've been in on the beginning, the rise, peak, collapse and end of the talking picture.”

— Joseph L. Mankiewicz

There's nothing as real as money.

— 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

“So many people know me.
I wish I did.
I wish someone would tell me about me.”

— Joseph L. Mankiewicz

“Please don't look at me as if you had a source of income other than your salary.”

— Joseph L. Mankiewicz

“[Writers are] the highest paid secretaries in the world.”

— 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 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 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

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

“Every screenwriter worthy of the name has already directed his film when he has written his script.”

— Joseph L. Mankiewicz