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

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
People
Sarcastic
Inspiring
Kill
Sweet
Funny
Tell
Truth
Going

More quotes by Billy Wilder

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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
Billy Wilder
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Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
Billy Wilder
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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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.
Billy Wilder
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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
Billy Wilder
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Jerry: Oh, you don't understand, Osgood! Ehhhh... I'm a man. Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder
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If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder
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Marilyn was mean. Terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever met around this town. I have never met anybody as mean as Marilyn Monroe or as utterly fabulous on the screen.
Billy Wilder
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Well, nobody's perfect.
Billy Wilder
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
Billy Wilder
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I just always think, 'Do I like it?' And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
Billy Wilder
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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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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.
Billy Wilder
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[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
Billy Wilder
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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.
Billy Wilder