"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."

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

"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 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."

"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 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'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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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"

"The world is not based on fairness. Human beings can rise to fairness, can administer something that makes it fair or just. But that's not God."

"A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.'"

"When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you."

"I trust if your life is right, the right things will happen at the right time. If the chords are in harmony inside, I think other things will happen in the same way. That sounded highfalutin' to me once, but I believe it now."

"I've read everything printed in English that Freud has written. It helped me a great deal."

"Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?"