Alfred Hitchcock Quotes

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

I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks.

Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen.

I have a feeling that inside you somewhere,there's somebody nobody knows about

Ideas come from everything

A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.

I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened; they revolt me. That round white thing without any holes, and when you break it, inside there’s that yellow thing, round, without any holes… Brrr! Have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.

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.'

There is something more important than logic: imagination

I'm a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.

I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled.

Puns are the highest form of literature.

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.

Cary Grant is the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.

In reference to the murder scene in 'Dial M for murder' As you have seen on the screen the best way to do it is with a scissor.

Never turn your back on a friend.

I was an uncommonly unattractive young man.

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

All love scenes started on the set are continued in the dressing room.

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

For me, suspense doesn't have any value if it's not balanced by humor.

San Francisco would be a good location for a murder mystery.

Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest. -Alfred Hitchcock

A woman, I always say, should be like a good suspense movie: The more left to the imagination, the more excitement there is. This should be her aim - to create suspense, to let a man discover things about her without her having to tell him.

The ideal husband understands every word his wife doesn't say.

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

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

In a good marriage each is the others better half.

The picture's over. Now I have to go and put it on film.

Drama is life with the dull bits left out. There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. I believe in putting the horror in the minds of the audience, and not necessarily on the screen. The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

Mystery is an intellectual process... But suspense is essentially an emotional process.

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

I'm sure anyone who likes a good crime, provided it is not the victim.

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

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

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

Drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out.

I’ve never been very keen on women who hang their sex round their neck like baubles. I think it should be discovered. It’s more interesting to discover the sex in a woman than it is to have it thrown at you, like a Marilyn Monroe or those types. To me they are rather vulgar and obvious.

Someone once told me that every minute a murder occurs, so I don't want to waste your time, I know you want to go back to work.

I always take the audience into account.

It has been rumored that "Psycho" is so terrifying that it will scare some people speechless. Some of my men hopefully sent their wives to a screening. The women emerged badly shaken but still vigorously vocal.

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.

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.

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

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders.

Even my failures make money and become classics a year after I make them.