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 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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I hate that word. It’s return–a return to the millions of people who’ve never forgiven me for deserting the screen.
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 -
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 -
She was an absolute genius as a comedic actress, with an extraordinary sense for comedic dialogue. It was a God-given gift.
BILLY WILDER -
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
BILLY WILDER -
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER -
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 -
I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
BILLY WILDER -
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER -
My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
BILLY WILDER -
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
BILLY WILDER -
If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
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 -
I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
BILLY WILDER -
The best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER