Rupert Hughes

"We movie people should not be afraid of what people will say of our work. We should not allow a word or a theory to drive us into anything or away from anything without some strong inner reason. Most of all, we should not be afraid of popularity and of financial success. Success is like posterity brought within our immediate vicinity. To have pleased millions of people with comedy, pathos or a well-constructed story is to have done a glorious thing. You can call it art, merchandise, trash or wooden nutmegs, but you cannot rob it of its noble mission—to cast light into dark places."

"You can't use imitation silk before the motion picture camera. The lens is even quicker to detect imitation emotion."

"Horace said: "He who would make others weep, must first have wept himself." Every motion picture director should have that on his wall."

"Ever since I was six years old people have been prophesying that I was going to kill myself with overwork. All the prophets are now dead."

"We could make some very fine motion pictures if we didn't have to bother with cameras and lights."

"The censors are going to stop crime by censoring the films. Why don't they put an end to diseases by burning the medical books which describe them?"

"When an actor loses control of himself he loses control of his audience."

"Of course they put communist propaganda in the movies! They paint a rich man as a fiend. They make every rich man in a play look like a fat boy in a museum, and every poor boy is made out as a skeleton. Actually, the only millionaires I've ever known were skinny dyspeptics—look at Rockefeller."

"Woman's intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking."