Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement.

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.

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

Our primary function is to create an emotion and our secondary function is to sustain that emotions.

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

Actually, I have no regard for money. Aside from its purchasing power, it's completely useless as far as I'm concerned.

I try to offset any tendency towards the macabre with humour. As I see it, this is a typically English form of humour. It's a piece with such jokes as the one about the man who was being led to the gallows to be hanged. He looked at the trap door in the gallows, which was flimsily constructed, and he asked in some alarm, 'I say, is that thing safe?