If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
BILLY WILDERIf you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
BILLY WILDERThe more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDERI’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 WILDERI 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.
BILLY WILDERWe are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
BILLY WILDERShoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
BILLY WILDERMy English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
BILLY WILDERI 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.
BILLY WILDERMoney makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDERHindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDERNow, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window – that is at once interesting.
BILLY WILDERAh, 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.
BILLY WILDERThe Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDERThe only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDERHollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
BILLY WILDERHappiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER