Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by Alfred Hitchcock - Page 2

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.

I always try to look at things as though I were remembering them three years later.

The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema

Ideas come from everything

A woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing doesn't want to go to the movies to watch a film about a woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement. ... The conventional big-bosomed blonde is not mysterious. And what could be more obvious than the old black velvet and pearls type? The perfect ‘woman of mystery’ is one who is blonde, subtle and Nordic. ... Although I do not profess to be an authority on women, I fear that the perfect title [for a movie], like the perfect woman is difficult to find.

I'm not much into rear window ethics.

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

It has been rumored that "Psycho" is so terrifying that it will scare some people speechless. Some of my men hopefully sent their wives to a screening. The women emerged badly shaken but still vigorously vocal.

Never turn your back on a friend.

Puns are the highest form of literature.

Actually, I have no regard for money. Aside from its purchasing power, it's completely useless as far as I'm concerned.

I try to offset any tendency towards the macabre with humour. As I see it, this is a typically English form of humour. It's a piece with such jokes as the one about the man who was being led to the gallows to be hanged. He looked at the trap door in the gallows, which was flimsily constructed, and he asked in some alarm, 'I say, is that thing safe?

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

I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.

Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement and, occasionally, a hearty meal.

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

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.

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

Cary Grant is the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.

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.

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. I have prepared one of my own. 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.

Everything's perverted in a different way.

[When accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement award] I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat (Patricia Hitchcock), and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville.

One must never set up a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life.

I like stories with lots of psychology.

All love scenes started on the set are continued in the dressing room.

Seeing a murder on television can help us unload the feelings of hate themselves. If you do not have feelings of hatred, may be obtained in the advertising interval.

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

A woman, I always say, should be like a good suspense movie: The more left to the imagination, the more excitement there is. This should be her aim - to create suspense, to let a man discover things about her without her having to tell him.

Our primary function is to create an emotion and our secondary function is to sustain that emotions.

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

Even my failures make money and become classics a year after I make them.

In a good marriage each is the others better half.

This weapon [an ax] is primitive but effective. And it's also guaranteed to be fifty-percent painless. You see, it takes two people to operate, and the person at this end [the handle] doesn't feel a thing.

Kicking is very important in football. In fact, some of the more enthusiastic players even kick the ball, occasionally.

I was an uncommonly unattractive young man.

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

I'm frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me.

A movie should be as long as one can hold their bladder

One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.

I always take the audience into account.

There are several differences between a football game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also, there are usually more casualties in a football game. The object of the game is to move a ball past the other team's goal line. This counts as six points. No points are given for lacerations, contusions, or abrasions, but then no points are deducted, either. Kicking is very important in football. In fact, some of the more enthusiastic players even kick the ball, occasionally.

You think she's pretty, you ought to see my slingshot!

Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest. -Alfred Hitchcock

To me Psycho was a big comedy. Had to be.

Our original title, you know, was `The Man in Lincoln`s Nose`. Couldn`t use it, though. They also wouldn`t let us shoot people on Mount Rushmore. Can`t deface a national monument. And it`s a pity, too, because I had a wonde.

The Birds could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.

San Francisco would be a good location for a murder mystery.

Claude Jade is a brave nice young lady. But I don't give any guarantee what she will do on a taxi's back seat.

In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.

There are several differences between a footballl game and a revolution. For one thing, a football game usually lasts longer and the participants wear uniforms. Also there are more injuries at a football game.

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.