Between worrying about my family in New York, reading constant updates about Hurricane Sandy, and reading great stuff about last night’s Homeland episode (review coming soon), I randomly stumbled upon this great list from Indiewire:

1.) “Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.”

2.) “The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”

3.) “To me, all human behavior is unpredictable and, considering man’s frailty… and… the ramshackle universe he functions in, it’s… all irrational.”

4.) “The writer in America isn’t part of the culture of this country. He’s like a fine dog. People like him around, but he’s of no use.”

5.) “The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one… If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.”

William Faulkner worked in Hollywood’s Golden Age on films like The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. Being a huge fan of his fiction, I’ve always felt his films where great partially because of how they slyly thumbed their nose at the notion of Hollywood as a machine.  This list pretty much affirms this cynicism.