Alfred Hitchcock Quotes - Page 3

Puns are the highest form of literature.

For me, suspense doesn't have any value if it's not balanced by humor.

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.

When you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you are going to create something - that's as happy as I'd want to be.

Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.

I don't understand why we have to experiment with film. I think everything should be done on paper. A musician has to do it, a composer. He puts a lot of dots down and beautiful music comes out. And I think that students should be taught to visualize. That's the one thing missing in all this. The one thing that the student has got to do is to learn that there is a rectangle up there - a white rectangle in a theater - and it has to be filled.

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.

It seems to me that television is exactly like a gun. Your enjoyment of it is determined by which end of it you're on.

I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened; they revolt me. That round white thing without any holes, and when you break it, inside there’s that yellow thing, round, without any holes… Brrr! Have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.

I'm a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.

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.

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

A woman of mystery is one who also has a certain maturity and whose actions speak louder than words. Any woman can be one, if she keeps those two points in mind. She should grow up-and shut up.

I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.

I’ve never been very keen on women who hang their sex round their neck like baubles. I think it should be discovered. It’s more interesting to discover the sex in a woman than it is to have it thrown at you, like a Marilyn Monroe or those types. To me they are rather vulgar and obvious.

A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

I would almost say that the best screen actor is the man who can do nothing extremely well.

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

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.

The picture's over. Now I have to go and put it on film.

It's only a movie, and, after all, we're all grossly overpaid.

I can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.