Quotes By Alfred Hitchcock

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.

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

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.'

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.

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

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

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.

Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.

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.

For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.

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

What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.

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.

I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.

Revenge is sweet and not fattening.

The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.

Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.

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.