I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
BILLY WILDERGod save me from myself.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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Ah, Marilyn, Hollywood’s Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town.
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I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we’re dealing with, and that we’re not making a picture for Harvard Law School.
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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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We’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.
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I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
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Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
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Well, nobody’s perfect.
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Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house.
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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
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My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
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Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.
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The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
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I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
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My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
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I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
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I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.
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She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.
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The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.
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Marilyn was mean. Terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever met around this town. I have never met anybody as mean as Marilyn Monroe or as utterly fabulous on the screen.
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You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that’s the bunk. It’s little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.
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Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER