If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
BILLY WILDERMoney makes even bastards legitimate.
More Billy Wilder Quotes
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I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
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I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.
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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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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.
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The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
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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.
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God save me from myself.
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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.
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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.
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I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
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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.
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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.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
BILLY WILDER







