A biography for Billy Wilderhasn’t been written yet.
“Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.”
“I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.”
“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”
“France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.”
“An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.”
“Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.”
“I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.”
“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”
“They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original.”
“The best director is the one you don't see.”
“The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.”
“France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.”
“He has Van Gogh's ear for music.”
“You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.”
“My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?”
“Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.”
“We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.”
“A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.”
“Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also.”
“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.”