Preston Sturges Quotes
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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.
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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.
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Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.
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After I saw a couple of pictures put out by my fellow comedy-directors, which seemed to have abandoned the fun in favor of the message, I wrote Sullivan's Travels to satisfy an urge to tell them that they were getting a little too deep-dish, to leave the preaching to the preachers.
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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.
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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.
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When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again.
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Now I've laid me down to die I pray my neighbors not to pry Too deeply into sins that I Not only cannot here deny But much enjoyed as life flew by.
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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.
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If war is the solution, why didn't Roosevelt declare war on poverty?
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I never write down to my audiences. I respect honest sentiment and honest pratfalls.
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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.
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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.
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If I can't find real situations that interest me in real life, then I'll go and write them in play form.
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Of the Sturges family, much more is known than is available about poor Irish immigrants and obscure Scottish-English settlers around Rochester.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I compared pooh-poohers of the movies to the myopics who used to holler, 'Get a horse!' when an early automobile exploded by.
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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.
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Theater in which you eat is the oldest form of theater.
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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.
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A pretty girl is better than a plain one. A leg is better than an arm. A bedroom is better than a living room. An arrival is better that a departure. A birth is better than a death. A chase is better than a chat. A dog is better than a landscape. A kitten is better than a dog. A baby is better than a kitten. A kiss is better than a baby. A pratfall is better than anything.
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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.