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

Well, nobody's perfect.

The best director is the one you don't see.

Marilyn was mean. Terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever met around this town. I have never met anybody as mean as Marilyn Monroe or as utterly fabulous on the screen.

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

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

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.