Alfred Hitchcock

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

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

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

"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."

"Always make the audience suffer as much as possible."

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

"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."

"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."

"Stay out of jail."

"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."

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

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."

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

"I'm sure anyone who likes a good crime, provided it is not the victim."

"Love those wrongdoers, they need it more than you."

"Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare."

"I have never known birds of different species to flock together. The very concept is unimaginable. Why, if that happened, we wouldn't stand a chance! How could we possibly hope to fight them?"

"There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean. We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!" In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story."

"Content, I am not interested in that at all. I don't give a damn what the film is about. I am more interested in how to handle the material so as to create an emotion in the audience. I find too many people are interested in the content. If you were painting a still life of some apples on a plate, it's like you'd be worrying whether the apples were sweet or sour. Who cares?"