Quotes By Alfred Hitchcock

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

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

There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating.

Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table.

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.

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.

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.

I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.

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.

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

I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

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.

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 is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.

Self-plagiarism is style.

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.

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.'

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.

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

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

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

This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid.

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.

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

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.

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.

The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.