About Dario Argento and his film Profondo rosso (1975): "This young Italian guy is starting to worry me."
About his actress Claude Jade, who starred in Topaz (1969): "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."
"Actors are cattle."
"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it."
"A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake."
"Always make the audience suffer as much as possible."
"Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."
"Cary Grant is the only actor I ever loved in my whole life."
"Cartoonists have the best casting system. If they don't like an actor, they just tear him up."
"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."
"Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up."
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
"Even my failures make money and become classics a year after I make them."
"Film your murders like love scenes, and film your love scenes like murders."
"For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake."
"Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare."
[His entire acceptance speech for the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award] "Thank you."
"[Hitchcock] said, 'I don't want you going back to sink-to-sink movies. You do movies where you wash the dishes looking drab in an apron. The audience wants to see their leading ladies dressed up.' He saw me as others didn't." - Eva Marie Saint
"I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach."
"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."
"I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks."
"I enjoy playing the audience like a piano."
"I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it."
"I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle."
"I was an uncommonly unattractive young 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."
"I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them."
"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 feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director."
"In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man."
Ingrid Bergman, trying to make Hitchcock help her understand the motivation for the feelings of her character told him that: "I don't feel like that, I don't think I can give you that kind of emotion." Hitchcock replied: "Ingrid - fake it!"
"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."
"It's only a movie, and, after all, we're all grossly overpaid."
"Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement and, occasionally, a hearty meal."
On directing Charles Laughton: "You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope for is to referee."
On his cameos: "One of the earliest of these was in _The Lodger_, the story of Jack the Ripper. My appearance called for me to walk up the stairs of the rooming house. Since my walk-ons in subsequent pictures would be equally strenuous - boarding buses, playing chess, etc. - I asked for a stunt man. Casting, with an unusual lack of perception, hired this fat man!"
[regarding "The Birds" (1963)] You know I've often wondered what the Audubon Society's attitude might be to this picture.
"Revenge is sweet and not fattening."
"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."
"Self-plagiarism is style."
"Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake."
"Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table."
"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 has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs."
"Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it."
"Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house."
"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."
"The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture."
"The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them."
"The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop."
"There is a dreadful story that I hate actors. Imagine anyone hating Jimmy Stewart... or Jack Warner. I can't imagine how such a rumor began. Of course it may possibly be because I was once quoted as saying that actors are cattle. My actor friends know I would never be capable of such a thoughtless, rude and unfeeling remark, that I would never call them cattle... What I probably said was that actors should be treated like cattle."
"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it."
"There is nothing quite so good as burial at sea. It is simple, tidy, and not very incriminating."
"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."
"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."
"This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid."
"This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop."
"To me Psycho was a big comedy. Had 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."
"What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out."
"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.'"
[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, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville."
"You reach a point where you say you're not going to do juveniles any longer."