The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.
BILLY WILDERI hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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God save me from myself.
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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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I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
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I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it’s getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous.
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France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can’t tear the toilet paper.
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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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If you don’t like what you’re doing, it’s unlikely anyone else will either, so be sure you are happy with your own work first.
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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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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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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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Well, nobody’s perfect.
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Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
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I had one life. And what did I do? Wasted it in some palooka preliminaries in Spain, just before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up for the main event.
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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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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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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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Money makes even bastards legitimate.
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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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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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I’m delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we’ve got something to look down on.
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If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
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After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along come class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano.
BILLY WILDER