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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.

Billy Wilder

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
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.
BILLY WILDER

Able Actors Camera Writing
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
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

Keep Manufacture Original Trying
We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
BILLY WILDER

Mediocre Track Undoubtedly
Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Men Perfect Wells
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
BILLY WILDER

Aunt Hold Pay Punctuation
I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it’s getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous.
BILLY WILDER

Act Appalled Courageous Get Perhaps Say
Marilyn was mean. Terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever met around this town. I have never met anybody as mean as Marilyn Monroe or as utterly fabulous on the screen.
BILLY WILDER

Around Fabulous Mean Met Towns
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
BILLY WILDER

Inspirational Motivational Movie
If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
BILLY WILDER

Bad Noses Smell
Now, 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 WILDER

Interesting Mean Men
Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
BILLY WILDER

Country Hollywood Killing People
Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Gender Nobody Perfect Well
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
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.
BILLY WILDER

Animal Country Elephants
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER

Life Music Sarcastic
We’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.
BILLY WILDER

Class Middle Normal People Restaurant
The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDER

Believe People World
The best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER

Directors Inspirational Motivational
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
BILLY WILDER

Cutting Finals Nine
[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.
BILLY WILDER

Bathroom Hotel Sleep Sunset
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.
BILLY WILDER

Believe Thinking Years

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 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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Popular Authors

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