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

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

I am a critic - as essential to the theatre as ants to a picnic.

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

And Kate Hepburn-God, she's beautiful, God, she plays golf well, God, she can get anyone in the world on the phone, God, she knows what to do all the…

- Joseph L. Mankiewicz