“Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.”

I’m a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.

Drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out.

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

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

The ideal husband understands every word his wife doesn’t say.

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.

The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.

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.

Seeing a murder on television can help us unload the feelings of hate themselves. If you do not have feelings of hatred, may be obtained in the advertising interval.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

Our primary function is to create an emotion and our secondary function is to sustain that emotions.

A woman, I always say, should be like a good suspense movie: The more left to the imagination, the more excitement there is. This should be her aim – to create suspense, to let a man discover things about her without her having to tell him.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

There is something more important than logic: imagination.

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

I like stories with lots of psychology.

Bipartisanship is not what is missing in Washington. Common sense is.

The heyday of woman’s life is the shady side of fifty.

A member of the committee slapped a name tag over my left bosom. “What shall we name the other one?” I smiled. She was not amused.

Happiness, at my age, is breathing

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Friends are “annuals” that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a “perennial” that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.

With age come the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?

You know you’re getting old when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.