Quotes from Alfred Hitchcock

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

[On Rear Window:] I'll bet you that nine out of ten people, if they see a woman across the courtyard undressing for bed, or even a man puttering around in his room, will stay and look; no one turns away and says, "It's none of my business." They could pull down their blinds, but they never do; they stand there and look out.

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

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.

What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.

Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.

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

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

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.

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

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.

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

Drama is life with the dull parts cut out 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.

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

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

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

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 equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.

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

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.'

Puns are the highest form of literature.

Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.

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

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