black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Well, nobody’s perfect.
BILLY WILDER

Gender Nobody Perfect Well
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
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
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
BILLY WILDER

Dream Good Inspiration Morning
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
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
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
The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
BILLY WILDER

Hiding Plot Subtle
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
BILLY WILDER

Inspirational Motivational Movie
I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
BILLY WILDER

Like Made Picture
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
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
BILLY WILDER

Firsts Real Writing
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
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

Book Director Fighting Stupid Theory
If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
BILLY WILDER

Hate Seriously Taken
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
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 am big. It’s the pictures that got small.
BILLY WILDER

Great Year Hollywood Films Movie
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
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

Deserve Fight Important Writer
The best director is the one you don’t see.
BILLY WILDER

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

Bad Noses Smell
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
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
Money makes even bastards legitimate.
BILLY WILDER

Bastard Legitimate Make Money
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
BILLY WILDER

Fire Playing Writing

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Billy Wilder Quotes