Quotes by Alfred Hitchcock

• The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.
• Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table.
• Someone once told me that every minute a murder occurs, so I don't want to waste your time, I know you want to go back to work.
• Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.
• Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
• This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid.
• Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.
• Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.
• The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
• Self-plagiarism is style.
• The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.
• The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
• There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
• There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.
• These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
• Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.
• This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
• We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.
• What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.
• When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'
• There is nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.
• Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.
• A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.
• A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.
• Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
• Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
• Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
• Revenge is sweet and not fattening.
• Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
• For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.
• Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.
• In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.
• I am scared easily, here is a list of my adrenaline - production: 1: small children, 2: policemen, 3: high places, 4: that my next movie will not be as good as the last one.
• I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks.
• I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.
• I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.
• I'm full of fears and I do my best to avoid difficulties and any kind of complications. I like everything around me to be clear as crystal and completely calm.
• I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.
• If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
• In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.
• I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
• Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.
• Our mistakes aren't ideal, but they sure do make for great Hitchcock plots.