Billy Wilder quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Billy Wilder on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

I hate that word. It's return
a return to the millions of people who've never forgiven me for deserting the screen.

Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.

I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

I've met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.

You're as good as the best thing you've ever done.

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

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.

My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.

Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.

They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original.

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

That's the trouble with you readers. You know all the plots.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

I just made pictures I would've liked to see.

Develop a clean line of action for your leading character

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.

Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

Make subtlety obvious.

The best director is the one you don't see.

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.

Money makes even bastards legitimate.

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

It was hell at the time, but after it was over, it was wonderful.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

When Chaplin found a voice to say what was on his mind, he was like a child of eight writing lyrics for Beethoven's Ninth.

I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.

I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.

That's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.

The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.

I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.

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

God save me from myself.

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.

On Ernst Lubitsch: He could do more with a closed door than other directors could do with an open fly.

Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

Ever notice how these European trains always smell of eau de cologne and hard boiled eggs?

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.

If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?

One's too many, and a hundred's not enough.

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

I just always think, 'Do I like it?' And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.