Billy Wilder

The best director is the one you don't see.

France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.

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

I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

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

I've met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.

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

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

Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also.

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

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

It was hell at the time, but after it was over, it was wonderful.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

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

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.

Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.

They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original.

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

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.