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 WILDERThe 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.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDER -
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
BILLY WILDER -
Hollywood didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe, it’s the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
BILLY WILDER -
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.
BILLY WILDER -
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER -
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER -
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
BILLY WILDER -
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
BILLY WILDER -
If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
BILLY WILDER -
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
BILLY WILDER -
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
BILLY WILDER -
Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! Ehhhh… I’m a man. Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER -
France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can’t tear the toilet paper.
BILLY WILDER -
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER -
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







