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

Billy Wilder

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Billy Wilder
Age: 95 †
Born: 1906
Born: June 22
Died: 2002
Died: March 27
Film Director
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Journalist
Screenwriter
Writer
Samuel Wilder
Beethoven
Hitler
German
Brilliant
Made
Believe
World
People
Austrian

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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
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The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.
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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.
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?
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I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
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If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.
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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.
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I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we’re dealing with, and that we’re not making a picture for Harvard Law School, we’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.
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I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.
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Well, nobody's perfect.
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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.
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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.
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If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
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An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.
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God save me from myself.
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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.
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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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The best director is the one you don't see.
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