We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.

It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along the street. How can I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?

On Ernst Lubitsch: He could do more with a closed door than other directors could do with an open fly.

Develop a clean line of action for your leading character

I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we’re dealing with, and that we’re not making a picture for Harvard Law School, we’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.

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