Billy Wilder

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

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.

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

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

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.

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

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

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.

He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.

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

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

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

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

If there’s anything I hate more than being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.

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

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

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

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

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

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

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

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

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

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

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