Published in the USA as 'Pieces of Time' – twenty-three essays on his American cinema, including Cary Grant, John Wayne, 'Sex and Violence', Ernst Lubitsch, 'Screenwriters and Preston Sturges', and the author's shot at the appeal of movies,
'Can I tell one quick story? It's not a funny story, but it's a nice story to end with. It has to do with why we all sit around talking about movies so much. What is it we like about the movies? I was sitting with Jimmy Stewart one time and we got on to the subject of movies and the effect they have on people. And Jimmy told me this story: "We were shooting a picture in Colorado. We broke for lunch, and it was the usual terrible box lunch. And this guy, an older fella, who'd been watching us, he comes over to me and says, 'You Stewart?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'You said a poem once in a picture. That was good.' And I said, 'Thank you very much.' That was all he said and he walked away. And I knew just what scene he meant – it was a scene in a picture made twenty years before, and it was just about a minute, and he'd remembered it all these years. And I thought, that's the wonderful thing about movies. Because if you're good, and God helps you, and you're lucky enough to have a personality that comes across, then what you're doing is, you're giving people little... tiny... pieces of time... that they never forget." Isn't that a great description of movies?'
