Gene Wilder

“It's difficult to continue loving someone who shits on you.”

“If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?”

“I love the art of acting, and I love film, because you always have another chance if you want it. You know, if we - if this isn't going well, you can't say - well, you could say - let's stop. Let's start over again, Gene, because you were too nervous.”

“My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.”

“When I'm not working on something, I seem to go through periods of depression. It helps to keep busy.”

“I never thought of it as God. I didn't know what to call it. I don't believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it by another name, that drives them.”

“My wife and I water color, paint water colors.”

“My mother was suffering every day of her life, and what right did I have to be happy if she was suffering? So whenever I got happy about something, I felt the need to cut it off, and the only way to cut it off was to pray. 'Forgive me Lord.' For what, I didn't know.”

“I'm stopped by mothers who say, 'Mr. Wilder, what advice would you give to my young boy? He's really talented.'”

“Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because, well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.”

“When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you.”

“I'm an actor, not a clown.”

“What do actors really want? To be great actors? Yes, but you can't buy talent, so it's best to leave the word 'great' out of it. I think to be believed, onstage or onscreen, is the one hope that all actors share.”

“I'm not a natural writer like, let's say - I'm not talking about Arthur Miller; that's a whole other thing - but let's say Woody Allen. But the more I've written, the more I've found that there is a deep well in me somewhere that wants to express things that I'm not going to find unless I write them myself.”

“I trust if your life is right, the right things will happen at the right time. If the chords are in harmony inside, I think other things will happen in the same way. That sounded highfalutin' to me once, but I believe it now.”

“Pride is not the worst of sins. In fact, it's one of the most interesting ones.”

“What I learned from Mel Brooks was audacity - in performance as in life. Maybe you go too far, but try it.”

“When I was in desperate trouble for maybe eight or nine years, I went to a neuropsychiatrist.”

“Sidney Poitier was directing a film called 'Hanky Panky.' And he said, 'Do you want to come with me to New York to see Gilda Radner in 'Lunch Hour' on Broadway? I said, 'I don't need to see her, I love her. I've wanted to write something for her for a long time. So it's OK by me.'”

“And in 'Frisco Kid' and in 'The Woman in Red' I had to ride badly. Then you have to really ride well in order to ride badly.”