I am big. It’s the pictures that got small. — Billy Wilder

I just made pictures I would’ve liked to see. — Billy Wilder

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

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire. — Billy Wilder

A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don’t bury our dead. When you think it’s out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot. — Billy Wilder

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. — Billy Wilder

I’m delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we’ve got something to look down on. — Billy Wilder

The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they’re a genius. — Billy Wilder

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

A tip from Lubitsch: ‘Let the audience add up two plus two and they’ll love you forever. — Charlotte Chandler

Everyone in the audience is an idiot, but taken together, they’re a genius. — Billy Wilder

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. — Billy Wilder

You’re only as good as the best thing you’ve ever done. — Billy Wilder

Hindsight is always twenty–twenty. — Billy Wilder

Ever notice how these European trains always smell of eau de cologne and hard boiled eggs? — Billy Wilder

I met a lot of hard–boiled eggs in my life, but you–you’re twenty minutes. — Billy Wilder

The best director is the one you don’t see. — Billy Wilder

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act. — Billy Wilder

God save me from myself. — Billy Wilder