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

Billy Wilder

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

Men Perfect Wells
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
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 WILDER

Art Looks Television
The 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.
BILLY WILDER

Country People Ring Smell Sound Stationery Telephone
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
BILLY WILDER

Country Happiness People Work
I 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 WILDER

Chamberlain Events Preliminaries Spain
I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
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

Hate People Return Screen
I 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 WILDER

Class Deal Law School Underestimate
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER

Bastard Legitimate Make Money
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
BILLY WILDER

Dream Good Inspiration Morning
The best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER

Directors Inspirational Motivational
Make subtlety obvious.
BILLY WILDER

Make Obvious Subtlety
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 forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.
BILLY WILDER

Grandmother Kings Old Thinking Tree
We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
BILLY WILDER

Mediocre Track Undoubtedly
An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.
BILLY WILDER

Actors Doors Entering Situation
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
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
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER

Funny History Luck
I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
BILLY WILDER

Like Made Picture
She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you’re really in the presence of something. In that league there’s only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It’s a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you’ve found it.
BILLY WILDER

League Little Understand Really Something
I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
BILLY WILDER

Great Year Hollywood Films Movie
God save me from myself.
BILLY WILDER

Catchy Save Me
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
BILLY WILDER

Firsts Real Writing
The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDER

Hiding Plot Subtle
The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDER

Believe People World

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

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

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Popular Authors

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