The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.
BILLY WILDERWe’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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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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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 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’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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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’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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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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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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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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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