Quotes from Billy Wilder

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

Money makes even bastards legitimate.

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

[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

God save me from myself.

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.

I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.

I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.

[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

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

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

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

I had one life. And what did I do? Wasted it in some palooka preliminaries in Spain, just before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up for the main event.

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.

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

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

The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.

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

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

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

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

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.