Alfred Hitchcock Quotes (60 Quotes)


    You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope for is to referee.

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

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




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

    The ideal husband understands every word his wife doesnt say.

    The best actor is the man who can do nothing extremely well.

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

    James Stewart once spoke up on behalf of his longtime friend before an audience of peers on the occasion of American Film Institute's tribute to the director. What he says he said, ... is that 'actors should be treated like cattle.'

    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.


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

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

    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.'

    Of the film, Hayes once said that Hitchcock wanted to do the movie just for fun, for relief from what he was doing regularly. ... an expensive self-indulgence, though it went over quite well whenever it reached an audience.

    that I am equipped with what other people have called a fiendish sense of humor.

    I have prepared one of my own time capsule. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.

    Here's a choice item, very rare. Only 740,000 were ever made

    I've become a body of films, not a man, I am all those films.


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

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

    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.

    I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes 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.


    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.

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


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


    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 reference to the murder scene in 'Dial M for murder' As you have seen on the screen the best way to do it is with a scissor.

    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.

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

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

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

    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.

    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.

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

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

    (when talking to a fans mother who was complaining that her daughter would no longer go in the shower after watching 'Phsyco')'Then madam I suggest you dry-clean her'

    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'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.

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


    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.

    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.


    More Alfred Hitchcock Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Movies - Performance Arts - Television - Man - Life - Fear - America - Time - Home - Body - Drama - Daughters - Idea - Will & Determination - Characters - Habit - Place - Enemy - People - View All Alfred Hitchcock Quotations

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