"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"

"I said something really stupid once. I told a friend that my mother was so beautiful, but my dad was ugly. My dad heard it and just laughed it off, but I felt guilty. It haunted me for years. I should never have said that."

"I've had a very good life and a very good career. I have no regrets."

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

"My wife and I water color, paint water colors."

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

"Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because, well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk."

"My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor."

"I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well."

"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."

"Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!"

"I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy."

"I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track. But yes, I don't like to get Maudlin. And I have a tendency towards it."

"I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this."

"I don't mean to sound - I don't want it to come out funny, but I don't like show business. I love - I love acting in films. I love it."

"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."

"I love acting, especially if it's a fantasy of some kind, where it's not just realistic, it's not naturalism."

"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."

"Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love."

"What I learned from Mel Brooks was audacity - in performance as in life. Maybe you go too far, but try it."

"I'm going to tell you what my religion is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Period. Terminato. Finito."

"I had a unique form: a Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma."

"I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track."

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

"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."

"My mother was suffering every day of her life, and what right did I have to be happy if she was suffering? So whenever I got happy about something, I felt the need to cut it off, and the only way to cut it off was to pray. 'Forgive me Lord.' For what, I didn't know."

"Whatever simplicity I've achieved in writing, I think I owe most of it to Jean Renoir and Hemingway: simple, declarative sentences. I've read some very good writers, but the sentences were so long that I've forgotten what the point was."

"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."

"My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character."

"I love the art of acting, and I love film, because you always have another chance if you want it. You know, if we - if this isn't going well, you can't say - well, you could say - let's stop. Let's start over again, Gene, because you were too nervous."

"Sidney Poitier was directing a film called 'Hanky Panky.' And he said, 'Do you want to come with me to New York to see Gilda Radner in 'Lunch Hour' on Broadway? I said, 'I don't need to see her, I love her. I've wanted to write something for her for a long time. So it's OK by me.'"

"The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept."

"The planet is fine. The people are fucked."

"Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid."

"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity."

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

"That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls."

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

"The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live."

"If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?"

"Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."

"Meow” means “woof” in cat."

"Religion is like a pair of shoes.....Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes."

"I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic."

"Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it."

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

"He - and if there is a God, I am convinced he is a he, because no woman could or would ever fuck things up this badly."

"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."

"I don't have pet peeves - I have major psychotic fucking hatreds."