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 WILDERI don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER -
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER -
Ah, 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 WILDER -
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 -
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 -
If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
BILLY WILDER -
I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
BILLY WILDER -
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 -
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 -
My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
BILLY WILDER -
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.
BILLY WILDER -
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 -
God save me from myself.
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER -
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDER







