Billy Wilder Quotes

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
Billy Wilder

I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we're dealing with, and that we're not making a picture for Harvard Law School, we're making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.
Billy Wilder

It used to be that we in films were the lowest form of art. Now we have something to look down on.
Billy Wilder

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
Billy Wilder

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

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

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

Making movies is a little like walking into a dark room. Some people stumble across furniture, others break their legs, but some of us see better in the dark than others. The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.
Billy Wilder

When I came here, Sunset Boulevard was in the country. It was not even asphalted when I came here in 1934.
Billy Wilder