Billy Wilder quotes

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. (Billy Wilder)
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
Billy Wilder
France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.
Billy Wilder
If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
Billy Wilder
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
Billy Wilder
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
Billy Wilder
I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.
Billy Wilder
An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.
Billy Wilder
If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.
Billy Wilder
I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.
Billy Wilder
You have Van Gogh's ear for music. (Billy Wilder)
What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
Billy Wilder
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
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
Billy Wilder
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
Billy Wilder
You're only as good as the best thing you've ever done.
Billy Wilder
I just made pictures I would've liked to see.
Billy Wilder
The Austrians have completed the feat of turning Beethoven into an Austrian, and Hitler into a German.
Billy Wilder
Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.
Billy Wilder
We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.
Billy Wilder
Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also. (Billy Wilder)
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
Billy Wilder
My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
Billy Wilder
One's too many, and a hundred's not enough.
Billy Wilder
Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.
Billy Wilder