Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

It is a luxury to be understood.

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.