Gene Wilder Quotes & Sayings

If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking? — Gene Wilder

I was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her's. I didn't think I had the right. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

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.' — Gene Wilder

Climbing hills was never one of my great ambitions. Perhaps I was just lazy, but I admit
now that I've been climbing a hill every other day
that it's very difficult to think about the stresses in your life while you're trying to avoid falling backwards when a goat with large horns is chasing you because you came too close to the little patch of grass he was planning to eat for breakfast. — Gene Wilder

Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction! — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

Woody makes a movie as if he were lighting 10,000 safety matches to illuminate a city. Each one is a little epiphany: topical, ethnic, or political. — Gene Wilder

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

dont put the sheep on the table — Gene Wilder

I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well. — Gene Wilder

When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people. — Gene Wilder

It's difficult to continue loving someone who shits on you. — Gene Wilder

What did you expect? Welcome, sonny? Make yourself at home? Marry my daughter? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know ... morons — Gene Wilder

I love the art of acting, and I love film, because you always have anther 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. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

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

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. — Gene Wilder

Time is a precious thing. Never waste it. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life and then you call it fate. That's why I call it irony. — Gene Wilder

But the acting process - create a human being - was real, not only to the audience, but real to me. — Gene Wilder

As they say in Corsica... Goodbye — Gene Wilder

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

Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

I'm not so funny. Gilda was funny. I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while. But she was funny. She spent more time worrying about being liked than anything else. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that's all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

Where is fancy bred,
in the heart or in the head? — Gene Wilder

The suspense is terrible. I hope it'll last. — Gene Wilder

To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste. — Gene Wilder

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. — Gene Wilder

On stage or in the movies I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free. — Gene Wilder

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 — Gene Wilder

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

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple — Gene Wilder

For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius! — Gene Wilder