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All Quotes by author - Preston Sturges
" According to my mother, positively no one, least of all herself, had even the faintest suspicion that she was heavy with child at the time of my birth. "
Time
Birth
Child
" By the very nature of his art, which depends on invention and innovation, a story teller must depart from the beaten track and, having done so, occasionally startle and disagree with some of his associates. Healthy disagreement we must have. "
Healthy
Story
Art
" Despite my express wish, I was not left in Chicago, but taken to Paris to live, and I did not see my father for many years. But we never stopped loving each other, and in 1940 he died in my arms in Hollywood, where he had come to be near me at the end. "
Me
End
Father
" Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. "
Me
Writer
Director
" For a southern belle, my grandmother was remarkably modern. She threw my grandfather out, for one thing - some kind of argument about bourbon whiskey - shortly after the birth of their third child, and then went back to school to get herself a teaching certificate. "
Child
School
Argument
" How many years and how many pictures does it take to win the confidence of Paramount? How many years before my fellow workers say, 'I know he is doing his best?' "
Know
Doing
Confidence
" I always was and always will be optimistic. "
Always
Will
Optimistic
" I am, of course, directly descended from Brian Boru, the last king of Ireland, a fact certified by my mother and therefore beyond dispute. But as everybody else with a drop of Irish blood in his carcass is also a guaranteed descendant of the old billy goat, I am not overly arrogant because of this royal strain. "
Old
Blood
I Am
" I am quite sure that a little man who braves ridicule to improve the lot of his fellow men, and is thanked by their jibes, is an interesting character. "
Men
Character
I Am
" I compared pooh-poohers of the movies to the myopics who used to holler, 'Get a horse!' when an early automobile exploded by. "
Used
Horse
Early
" I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started. "
Started
Night
He
" I did not think that a good movie was the equivalent of a good stage play, any more than I thought an automobile ride was as exhilarating as a drive behind a spirited horse, nor a trip by steam as soul-satisfying as a voyage by sail. "
Ride
Thought
Think
" I don't believe environment has the slightest bit to do with anything - I only believe in ancestral influence. It would have made no difference whether I'd been brought up in a reform school, or on the island of Lesbos. "
Believe
School
Environment
" If I can't find real situations that interest me in real life, then I'll go and write them in play form. "
Real Life
Me
Real
" If war is the solution, why didn't Roosevelt declare war on poverty? "
Poverty
Why
War
" I go through life accumulating possessions... I've always done it... and then, every once in a while, a sort of tidal wave comes along and washes them all away. "
Possessions
Done
Always
" I have always wondered why the movie industry was so firmly persuaded that the original author could be of no possible help in the case of a remake or any other change in a work. "
Help
Change
Possible
" I have never done anything but my very best work for anyone, and to do this and retain my first fine enthusiasm over a period of thirty years has required a rather special set of working conditions. "
Best
Done
Enthusiasm
" I never write down to my audiences. I respect honest sentiment and honest pratfalls. "
Never
Respect
Down
" In 'Remember the Night,' love reformed her and corrupted him, which gave us the finely balanced moral that one man's meat is another man's poison. "
Man
Love
Meat
" I thought for a month or so along the lines of what I call Monsieur Beaucaire in modern clothes. By that, I mean a hero who is believed by all to be a villain but who, in the end, is introduced as a man of great honor with a long list of decorations. "
Great
End
Hero
" It is probably a very good thing for a boy to learn to live with enmity, as opposed to an atmosphere of love and affection, as it hardens him and gives him a taste of what he is going to run into later in life. "
Learn
Life
Run
" It was actually the enormous risks I took with my pictures, skating right up to the edge of non-acceptance, that paid off so handsomely. "
Off
Edge
Risks
" I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature. "
Theory
Out
Architecture
" Much as I disliked the un-American idea of marrying a lady with a dowry, I must admit that little Mrs. Godfrey's little private income put everything in a faintly different light. "
Little
Light
Everything
" Of the Sturges family, much more is known than is available about poor Irish immigrants and obscure Scottish-English settlers around Rochester. "
More
Immigrants
Family
" Our gymnasium was remarkable and had more stuff in it than one could dream up in a nightmare. Furthermore, every boy had to use every piece of it during gymnasium class. "
Boy
Class
Dream
" Paris Singer had vastly more to do with shaping my character than Mother had; although Mother made innumerable sacrifices for me, and Paris Singer made none. I wanted to be like him. "
Singer
Mother
Me
" Theater in which you eat is the oldest form of theater. "
You
Which
Theater
" The camera must point at the exact spot the audience wishes to look at any given moment. To find that spot is absurdly easy: you only have to remember where you were looking at the time the scene was made. "
Camera
Remember
Moment
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