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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

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
My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
BILLY WILDER

English Mixtures Schwarzenegger
Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
BILLY WILDER

Country Hollywood Killing People
I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
BILLY WILDER

Like Made Picture
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 WILDER

Hit House Morning Rain Writing
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
BILLY WILDER

Mediocre Track Undoubtedly
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
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.
BILLY WILDER

Country People Ring Smell Sound Stationery Telephone
Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Men Perfect Wells
The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDER

Believe People World
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work
I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
BILLY WILDER

Anyone Fabulous Screen Utterly
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
BILLY WILDER

Directing Directors Film Sycophants
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

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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