Billy Wilder

"That piece of Hollywood shit with Billy Wilder [Buddy Buddy] is over, thank God. No outsider can imagine the stupidity, blustering hysteria, authoritarianism, and paralyzing boredom of shooting a flick for Billy Wilder. The so-called "actors" are simply trained poodles who sit up on their hind legs and jump through hoops. I thought the insanity would never stop. But I got a shitload of money."

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

"I just made pictures I would've liked to see."

"Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist."

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

"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."

"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."

"Es gibt über Marilyn Monroe mehr Bücher als über den zweiten Weltkrieg. Darin liegt eine gewisse Ähnlichkeit: es war die Hölle, aber es hat sich gelohnt."

"Die Österreicher haben das Kunststück fertiggebracht, aus Beethoven einen Österreicher und aus Hitler einen Deutschen zu machen."

"Würde ich noch einmal mit Marilyn [einen Film] drehen? Ich habe das mit meinem Hausarzt, meinem Psychiater und meinem Buchhalter diskutiert, und sie haben mir gesagt, ich sei zu alt und zu reich, um das noch einmal durchzumachen."