The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDERA 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.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
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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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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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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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France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can’t tear the toilet paper.
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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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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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[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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You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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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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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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Money makes even bastards legitimate.
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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.
BILLY WILDER