Preston Sturges

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.

Of the Sturges family, much more is known than is available about poor Irish immigrants and obscure Scottish-English settlers around Rochester.

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?'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.