Notes and Quotes: Thoughts on "The Greatest Gift" and It's A Wonderful Life

“I said, Frank [Capra], if you want me to be in a picture about a guy that wants to kill himself, and an angel comes down named Clarence, and he can’t swim and I save him and…well, I’m your man. When do we start?”   --- Jimmy Stewart

“It’s A Wonderful Life is America’s version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. George Bailey is our Ebeneezer Scrooge….[it] represents a proud and more romantic time in American history.” – Stephen Cox

“It’s got everything in it. It’s innocent, it’s mythological.” --- Richard Dreyfuss

“In dreams we summon up dark images which the waking mind would not tolerate; in them nothing is too absurd or too horrible to seem true. Imagination, unchecked by reason, runs riot, madly spinning false shapes of desire and fear. The sane banish their dream creations each morning – the insane permit them to haunt their daylight hours.” --- Philip Van Doren Stern

“I remember when I received mine [copy of “The Greatest Gift”]…I was road manager for Sammy Kaye’s orchestra and we were in California in 1943, and it was the first time I was homesick.  When I received Phil’s story, I cried. It was a totally original idea.” --- Miriam Stern, sister of Philip Van Doren Stern

“Nobody is born to be a failure and no man is poor if he has friends. You just enlarge on those two things and there’s not much more to say.” --- Jimmy Stewart

“I didn’t even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea.” --- Frank Capra