Preston Sturges Quotes

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

This is the story of two men who met in a banana republic. One of them never did anything dishonest in his life except for one crazy minute. The other never did anything honest in his life except for one crazy minute.

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.

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

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.

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

GERRY
I would step on your face!
HACKENSACKER
That's quite all right, I rather enjoyed it.
GERRY
Twice!
HACKENSACKER
You made quite an impression.

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.

Film is the greatest educational medium the world has ever known.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

THE POLITICIAN
If it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics. Men without ambition. Jellyfish!
CATHERINE
Especially since you can't rob the people anyway.
THE POLITICIAN
Sure ... How was that?
CATHERINE
What you rob, you spend. And what you spend goes back to the people. So where's the robbery? I read that in one of my father's books.
THE POLITICIAN
That book should be in every home!

If I can't find real situations that interest me in real life, then I'll go and write them in play form.

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.

JEAN
Boy, would I like to see you give some old harpie the three in one!
COLONEL
Don't be vulgar, Jane. Let us be crooked, but never common.

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.

You can't go around the theatres handing out cards saying, 'It isn't my fault'. You go onto the next one.

JEAN
I need him like the axe needs the turkey.
HARRINGTON
Don't be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked, but never common.

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.