Quotes by Alfred Hitchcock

Quotes by Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899, Leytonstone, London – 29 April 1980, Los Angeles, California)

A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theater admission and the babysitter were worth it.
A glimpse into the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality.

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.

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.

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

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.
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 never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

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 a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.

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

Ideas come from everything.
If I won’t be myself, who will? (‘Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews’)
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.
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.

Puns are the highest form of literature.

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 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.

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.
Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.
Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up every time.
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 picture’s over. Now I have to go and put it on film.

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.

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 equaled 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.

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.

We try to tell a good story and develop a hefty plot. Themes emerge as we go along.
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.'