Billy Wilder Quotes

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Billy Wilder

Profession : Director

Birth : June 22, 1906

He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

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

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

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

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

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

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

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

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

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder