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

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

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

I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all.

[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

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.