When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and read more

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain read more

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

I've always been the breadwinner and men don't like that. They turn on you. They bite the hand that feeds read more

I've always been the breadwinner and men don't like that. They turn on you. They bite the hand that feeds them. Eventually, too, they become very jealous of the love one has with an audience.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. read more

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in read more

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans read more

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.

Audiences cry in the theater when people make a hard choice-for life.

Audiences cry in the theater when people make a hard choice-for life.

Only for the phony is commercialism-the bending of creativity to common utility-a naughty word. To the truly creative, it is read more

Only for the phony is commercialism-the bending of creativity to common utility-a naughty word. To the truly creative, it is a bridge to the great audience, a means of sharing rather than debasing.