Quotes from Gene Wilder

I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while.

I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky.

If there's an audience, I think they're going to expect me to be funny. But what if I'm not funny? What if I fail?

I had a daughter and lost her a long while ago. That's too sad a story to go into.

I've read everything printed in English that Freud has written. It helped me a great deal.

The world is not based on fairness. Human beings can rise to fairness, can administer something that makes it fair or just. But that's not God.

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

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.

Time is a precious thing. Never waste it.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.

Still no word from Mel.

I found out that Willy Wonka had failed at the box office. It seems strange now to think that Roald Dahl's morality story wasn't embraced. I was told that many mothers thought the lessons in the movie were too cruel for children to understand. As the years since have proven, children don't have any trouble understanding the movie—they crave to know what the boundaries are. It was the mothers who had a little difficulty.

What I didn't know was that I don't need to act. I might want to act—just for the love of acting—but not because I need to earn the right to feel loved by God. I've got something much better. . . . I feel loved by the person I love.

I put my chin on my chest. I was afraid to look at any of the people who were watching us. My lips kept moving without making sounds: Please stop, please stop, everyone's watching. . . . But at the same time I was thinking, Good for you, Mama, good for you. What courage—to scream in front of the whole restaurant. Poor Daddy. Good for you, Mama.

There is one strange irony that I haven't told you. One April afternoon, three weeks before she died, Gilda walked up to me in our living room and said, "I have a title for you, 'Kiss Me Like a Stranger' . . . maybe you can use it some day." I had no idea why she said it or what the title meant; I just thanked her.

If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it. . . . Just be real, and it will be funnier.

After I had my drink with them and said good night to James Baldwin and was kissed by Simone Signoret on both cheeks, I went outside, walked close to my car, and threw up on the street. It wasn't about the food. I may act brave and sometimes outrageous—on screen—but in real life I get terribly nervous when I meet the great talents whom I've admired for years from afar.

Struggling to be a genius is endemic to young artists who are starting their careers, but after being bloodied a few times, they just hope that they won't be ridiculed in the press or on television by those few who have the power to coronate them or tear them down.

When the sun finally went down, the cameras started rolling, and I started running around the edge of the Lincoln Center fountain, shouting for all I was worth, "I want everything I've ever seen in the movies!" And the fountain was turned on, in the film and in my life.

I'm always lonely when I'm on my own—a leftover I think from the Demon, who always struck when I was alone—but towards the end of filming I realized that I was going to be lonelier when I returned to my home and family.

Success is a terrible thing and a wonderful thing. If you can enjoy it, it's wonderful. If it starts eating away at you, and they're waiting for more from me, or what can I do to top this, then you're in trouble. Just do what you love. That's all I want to do.

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.

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.

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