— Didn’t you girls say you went to a conservatory?
— Oh yes. A whole year.
— I thought you said three years.
— We got time off. For good behavior.

Wilder’s 1959 comedy is one of the enduring treasures of the movies, a film of inspiration and meticulous craft, a movie that’s about nothing but sex and yet pretends it’s about crime and greed. It is underwired with Wilder’s cheerful cynicism, so that no time is lost to soppiness and everyone behaves according to basic Darwinian drives. When sincere emotion strikes these characters, it blindsides them: Curtis thinks he wants only sex, Monroe thinks she wants only money, and they are as astonished as delighted to find they want only each other. — Roger Ebert

My God, I think there have been more books on Marilyn Monroe than on World War II and there’s a great similarity. It was not easy. It was hell. But it was well worth it. — Billy Wilder