Quote

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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Billy Wilder
Age: 95 †
Born: 1906
Born: June 22
Died: 2002
Died: March 27
Film Director
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Journalist
Screenwriter
Writer
Samuel Wilder
Voice
Found
Children
Chaplin
Writing
Ninth
Mind
Beethoven
Like
Lyrics
Eight
Child

More quotes by Billy Wilder

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What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
Billy Wilder
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If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?
Billy Wilder
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Well, nobody's perfect.
Billy Wilder
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The best director is the one you don't see.
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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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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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.
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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Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
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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If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
Billy Wilder
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Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.
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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I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.
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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The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a 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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Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
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 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