I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
BILLY WILDERLove 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.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
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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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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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I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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God save me from myself.
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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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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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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
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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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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 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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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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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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If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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Make subtlety obvious.
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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 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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One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.
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They’ve tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won’t work. She was an original.
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My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
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[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.
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The best director is the one you don’t see.
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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?
BILLY WILDER