Alfred Hitchcock Quotes

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Revenge is sweet and not fattening.

Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.

Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.

I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.

There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.

Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.

I'm full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.

There is nothing so good as a burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.

These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.

Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid.

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.

Self-plagiarism is style.

The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.

I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'