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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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Billy Wilder
Age: 95 †
Born: 1906
Born: June 22
Died: 2002
Died: March 27
Film Director
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Journalist
Screenwriter
Writer
Samuel Wilder
Writer
Better
Elegant
Hiding
Plot
Points
Subtle

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Well, nobody's perfect.
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I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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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.
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If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
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What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
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A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
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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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The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.
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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 just always think, 'Do I like it?' And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
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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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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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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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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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You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that's the bunk. It's little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.
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God save me from myself.
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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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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.
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