Quotes by Paddy Chayefsky

“I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going ...”

“We've established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived... and people are sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal nothing!”

“Oh, there are no living poets, Miss Van Damn. We're not entirely sure there ever were. They've found some shreds of sonnets in England and, embedded in a chalk wall of a cave in France, some yet un...”

“I'm a flaming faggot, Irving. I was sure you were on to that. I don't go around waving the flag, of course, and I definitely do not proselytize. Homosexuality is, to me, an inner satisfaction, a pr...”

“You don't send a man to his death because you want a hero.”

“You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment.”

“Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.”

“Television is democracy at its ugliest.”

“Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus a carnival a travelling troupe of acrobats storytellers dancers singers jugglers sideshow freaks...”

“It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.”

“We've established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived... and people are sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal nothing!”

“CANTOR: And ye shall know Him in the strangest costumes and in the strangest places.”

“MR FAULKNER: Give the facts a good look in the face, John.”

“MR HEALY: Are the people any wiser than they were a hundred years ago? Are they happier? This is the great American disease, boy! This passion for machines. Everybody is always inventing labor-savi...”

“DAUGHTER: Life doesn't dovetail so nicely . . .”

“Now, the word for television drama is depth, the digging under the surface of life for the more profound truths of human relationships. I cannot help but feel that this is where drama is going. Peo...”

“TWENTY-YEAR-OLD: I gotta girl, she's always asking me to marry her. So I look at that face, and I say to myself: Could I stand looking at that face for the resta my life?”

“Most movies, even the good ones, are based upon the extraordinary incident and the exceptional character. In writing the stage play, it is necessary to contrive exciting moments of theater. Marty a...”

“Marty was a comment on the social values of our times.”

“It is my current belief that the function of the writer is to give the audience some shred of meaning to the otherwise meaningless pattern of their lives. Our lives are filled with endless moments ...”