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.”

“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.”

“Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.”

“I always was and always will be optimistic.”

“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.”

“I compared pooh-poohers of the movies to the myopics who used to holler, 'Get a horse!' when an early automobile exploded by.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I worked out a rather deep-dish theory defining the theater as a form of architecture rather than a form of literature.”

“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.”

“The more you stand in the limelight, the more scarred you will become and the more you will love the limelight.”

“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.”

“Theater in which you eat is the oldest form of theater.”

“If war is the solution, why didn't Roosevelt declare war on poverty?”

“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.”

“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.”

“I never write down to my audiences. I respect honest sentiment and honest pratfalls.”

“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.”