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" 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. "
Preston Sturges
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" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Little
Light
Everything
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Child
School
Argument
" I compared pooh-poohers of the movies to the myopics who used to holler, 'Get a horse!' when an early automobile exploded by. "
Preston Sturges
Used
Horse
Early
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Ride
Thought
Think
" The more nearly the film cutter approaches the natural law of interest, the more invisible will be his cutting. If the camera moves from one person to another at the exact moment that you in the legitimate theatre would have turned your head, you will not be conscious of a cut. "
Preston Sturges
Law
Head
Moment
" Though I believe in God, I don't believe in religion for everybody. Some people who are a little weak and don't want to shoulder any responsibility need Catholicism. For people at the other extreme, there is Christian Science... I think a powerful conscience is worth all the religions put together. "
Preston Sturges
Science
God
Religion
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Believe
School
Environment
" I always was and always will be optimistic. "
Preston Sturges
Always
Will
Optimistic
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Best
Done
Enthusiasm
" If I can't find real situations that interest me in real life, then I'll go and write them in play form. "
Preston Sturges
Real Life
Me
Real
" If war is the solution, why didn't Roosevelt declare war on poverty? "
Preston Sturges
Poverty
Why
War
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Singer
Mother
Me
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Learn
Life
Run
" I never write down to my audiences. I respect honest sentiment and honest pratfalls. "
Preston Sturges
Never
Respect
Down
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Camera
Remember
Moment
" Theater in which you eat is the oldest form of theater. "
Preston Sturges
You
Which
Theater
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Old
Blood
I Am
" I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature. "
Preston Sturges
Theory
Out
Architecture
" The United States owes a great debt to its inventors. Far from being grateful to them, it places every obstruction in their way and makes it enormously difficult to secure a patent. "
Preston Sturges
Grateful
Great
Way
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Man
Love
Meat
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Healthy
Story
Art
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Off
Edge
Risks
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Me
End
Father
" The hook is a word or an idea spoken by one character which gives the next character something to hook onto when he responds or, like a trapeze artist, gives him something to swing from on his way to another point of view. "
Preston Sturges
Artist
Character
Point Of View
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Possessions
Done
Always
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Great
End
Hero
" 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?' "
Preston Sturges
Know
Doing
Confidence
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Men
Character
I Am
" Of the Sturges family, much more is known than is available about poor Irish immigrants and obscure Scottish-English settlers around Rochester. "
Preston Sturges
More
Immigrants
Family
" 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. "
Preston Sturges
Time
Birth
Child