Quote

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.

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
Life
Chamberlain
Spain
Wasted
Hitler
Event
Main
Warm
Events

More quotes by Billy Wilder

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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 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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The best director is the one you don't see.
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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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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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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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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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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
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Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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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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Well, nobody's perfect.
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The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
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Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
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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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The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
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You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
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I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.
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I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.
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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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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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