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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

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 don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
BILLY WILDER

Church Nylon Religion
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
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
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 met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you – you’re twenty minutes.
BILLY WILDER

Eggs Funny Twenties
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
BILLY WILDER

Action Character Lines
I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see.
BILLY WILDER

Like Made Picture
You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
BILLY WILDER

Best Things Done
My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
BILLY WILDER

English Mixtures Schwarzenegger
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
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER

Funny History Luck
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
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
BILLY WILDER

Firsts Real Writing
After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along come class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano.
BILLY WILDER

Class Girl Real Somebody Stars
The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
BILLY WILDER

Believe People World

The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

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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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