A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

Ever notice how these European trains always smell of eau de cologne and hard boiled eggs?

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.

The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?

If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.