Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDERWell, nobody’s perfect.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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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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I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
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I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
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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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I hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
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I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
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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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One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.
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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
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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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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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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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France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can’t tear the toilet paper.
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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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She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you’re really in the presence of something. In that league there’s only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It’s a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you’ve found it.
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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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Well, nobody’s perfect.
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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
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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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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.
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Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book?
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I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER