Quotes from Alfred Hitchcock

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

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

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.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks.

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

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.

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

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.

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

If you can't do it naturally, then fake it.

I understand that the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, astatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of sound achieved by the pig.

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.

I never said actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

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.

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

In North By Northwest during the scene on Mount Rushmore, I wanted Cary Grant to hide in Lincoln's nostril and then have a fit of sneezing. The Parks Commission...was rather upset at this thought. I argued until one of their number asked me how I would like it if they had Lincoln play the scene in Cary Grant's nose. I saw their point at once.