Alfred Hitchcock Quotes

By and large, I feel that the more interesting work in the field of murder is done by amateurs. They are people who perform their work with dignity and good taste, leavened with a sense of the grotesque. There is polite and wholesome mayhem, practiced by civilized people, and I personally enjoy it.

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

"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."

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.

"You know what I think? I think that . . . we're all stuck in our private traps — clamped in them — and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch." – Norman Bates from Psycho

I have a feeling that inside you somewhere,there's somebody nobody knows about

Quello che non riesco a capire è che uno si impadronisca completamente di un'opera, un buon romanzo che l'autore ha impiegato tre o quattro anni per scrivere e che è tutta la sua vita. Prendono il libro, lo manipolano per bene, si circondano di artigiani e tecnici quotati e si ritrovano candidati all'Oscar, mentre l'autore si dissolve nello sfondo

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

A glimpse into the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality.

Vale más partir del cliché que llegar a él.

Meu amor pelo cinema é mais importante do que qualquer moral

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

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 don't want to appear disloyal to television, but I think reading will be good for you.

[T]he director passed off the phrase as one of his "Machiavellian quips," not to be taken seriously. "Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil," he cautioned, with a straight face. "As a matter of fact, I couldn't work if I weren't on friendly terms with them; I'll bend over backward every time. Besides, I get into each picture I make, if only for a couple of seconds—so I'm probably a frustrated actor at heart myself."