28 Quotes by William Wyler

A director must push his actors to the utmost limit to get everything possible out of each scene - without being corny or sentimental or going overboard.

The war was an escape to reality... The only thing that mattered were human relationships; not money, not position, not even family... Only relationships with people who might be dead tomorrow were important. It is a sort of wonderful state of mind. It's too bad it takes a war to create such a condition among men.

If Beethoven could write his 'Eroica Symphony' stone deaf, then William Wyler can do a musical.

Confusion seems to have become the vogue of European directors.

Everything a director does must help the story and the performances. Otherwise, it is useless.

If we must have the Production Code, then I think the only way to use it effectively is to judge a film as a whole and determine whether its effect is good or bad.

Great pictures can't be entirely fictitious.

Pictures that will live on for years, like 'The Birth of a Nation' and 'Gone With the Wind,' had great historical events in the background.

The trouble with Hollywood is that too many of the top people responsible for pictures are too comfortable and don't give a damn about what goes up on the screen so long as it gets by at the box office. How can you expect people with that kind of attitude to make the kind of great pictures that the world will want to see?