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

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

You're as good as the best thing you've ever done.

The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.

You know, that stuff about pink elephants, that's the bunk. It's little animals. Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes.

I hate that word. It's return--a return to the millions of people who've never forgiven me for deserting the screen.