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.
BILLY WILDERIf there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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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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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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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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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 there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
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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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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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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.
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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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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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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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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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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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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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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






