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

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get…

- 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 woul…

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

I'm not biting my fingernails. I'm biting my knuckles. I finished the fingernails months ago.

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

All playwrights should be dead for three hundred years.

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

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

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz