Billy Wilder quotes

Billy Wilder was an Austrian-American filmmaker, regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile directors and screenwriters in Hollywood history. His career included classic films such as "Sunset Boulevard," "Some Like It Hot," and "The Apartment." He changed the landscape of American cinema and is remembered for his sharp wit and storytelling mastery. Here are 43 of his quotes:

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

Billy Wilder

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.

Billy Wilder

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

Billy Wilder

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

Billy Wilder

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

Billy Wilder

I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.

Billy Wilder

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

Billy Wilder

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

Billy Wilder

I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.

Billy Wilder

What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.

Billy Wilder

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.

Billy Wilder

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

Billy Wilder

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

Billy Wilder

You're only as good as the best thing you've ever done.

Billy Wilder

I just made pictures I would've liked to see.

Billy Wilder

The Austrians have completed the feat of turning Beethoven into an Austrian, and Hitler into a German.

Billy Wilder

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

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

Billy Wilder

Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.

Billy Wilder

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

Billy Wilder

One's too many, and a hundred's not enough.

Billy Wilder

Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.

Billy Wilder