Billy Wilder Quotes

“Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.”

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

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

“I’ve met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you’re twenty minutes!”

“What critics call dirty in our movies, they call lusty in foreign films.”

“I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore.”

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”

“The Austrians have completed the feat of turning Beethoven into an Austrian, and Hitler into a German.”

“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.”

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

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

“Of course, there must be subtleties. Just make sure you make them obvious.”

“I’d worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.”

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

“People copy, people steal. Most of the pictures they make nowadays are loaded down with
special effects. I couldn’t do that. I quit smoking because I couldn’t reload my Zippo.”

“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.”

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

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

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

“France is the only country where the money falls apart and you can’t tear the toilet paper.”

“I was the only director who ever made two pictures with Marilyn Monroe. Forget the Oscar,
I deserve the Purple Heart.”