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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.

Billy Wilder

You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
BILLY WILDER

Best Things Done
A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don’t bury our dead. When you think it’s out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot.
BILLY WILDER

Daughter Father Thinking
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.
BILLY WILDER

Around Fabulous Mean Met Towns
[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.
BILLY WILDER

Bathroom Hotel Sleep Sunset
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.
BILLY WILDER

Chamberlain Events Preliminaries Spain
They’ve tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won’t work. She was an original.
BILLY WILDER

Keep Manufacture Original Trying
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.
BILLY WILDER

Art Looks Television
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDER

Fire Playing Writing
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.
BILLY WILDER

First Firsts Own Unlikely
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
BILLY WILDER

Cutting Finals Nine
I, you know, am all over the place – every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent.
BILLY WILDER

Bored Category Moved People
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.
BILLY WILDER

Act Appalled Courageous Get Perhaps Say
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
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.
BILLY WILDER

League Little Understand Really Something
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?
BILLY WILDER

Book Director Fighting Stupid Theory
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work

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 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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Popular Authors

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