What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.

Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also.

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.

I, you know, am all over the place — every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent. I could not make, like Hitchcock did, one Hitchcock picture after another. … I wanted to do a Hitchcock picture, so I did `Witness for the Prosecution,’ then I was bored with it, so I moved on.

I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.

Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.