Moss Hart Quotes

All the mistakes I ever made were when I wanted to say 'No' and said 'Yes'.

The self-hatred that destroys is the waste of unfulfilled promise.

The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.

I have had many successes and many failures in my life. My successes have always been for different reasons, but my failures have always been for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.

You'd be surprised how many kings are only a queen with a moustache.

There's nothing the matter with Hollywood that a good earthquake couldn't cure.

One of the grave dangers inherent in the various stages of any theatrical career-whether it be budding, quiescent or diminishing-is the advice of friends.

Poor people know poor people, and rich people know rich people. It is one of the few things La Rochefoucauld did not say, but then La Rochefoucauld never lived in the Bronx.

Far more quickly than reason and logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.

Julie Andrews has a wonderful British strength that makes you wonder why they lost India.

Playwriting, like begging in India, is an honorable but humbling profession.

One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick.

Boredom is the keynote of poverty - of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with - for where there is no money there is no change of any kind.

Nobody bores any man as much as an unhappy female.

New York is not a city to return to in defeat.

The theatre breeds its own kind of cruelty, and its sadism takes on a keener edge since it can be enjoyed under the innocent guise of critical judgment.

Charity in the theater begins and ends with those who have a play opening within a week of one's own.

The frivolity with which all theatrical activity is conducted has one consoling feature-there are no rules of behavior that apply regularly to any part of the theatre.

There is nothing like tasting the grit of fear for rediscovering that the umbilical cord is made of piano wire.

Without vanity a writer's work is tepid, and he must accept his vanity as part of his stock in trade and live with it as one of the hazards of his profession.

A play for me never really takes on an aspect of reality until it has left the dryair of the study and begins to sniff the musty breezes of a bare stage.

A sharp sense of the ironic can be the equivalent of the faith that moves mountains. Far more quicky than reason or logic, irony can penetrate rage and puncture self-pity.

There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.

Self-deception is sometimes as necessary a tool as a crowbar.

There is something maddening about mediocrity that calls forth the worst in those who are forced to deal with it.