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

The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book – it makes a very poor doorstop.

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

The picture’s over. Now I have to go and put it on film.

To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script.

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

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don’t want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

I enjoy playing the audience like a piano.

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

Claude Jade is a brave nice young lady. But I don’t give any guarantee what she will do on a taxi’s back seat.

I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks.

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.

Mystery is an intellectual process. But suspense is essentially an emotional process.

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.’

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

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.

Actually, I have no regard for money. Aside from its purchasing power, it’s completely useless as far as I’m concerned.

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.

You Gujarati people are so cute but why is your food so dangerous dhokla, fafda, handva, thepla it sounds like they are missiles

There is a slight tomboyish side to me. But I was studious, and I did not bunk classes!

I know many of you thought that I would be retiring today, but if I was ever going to announce my retirement it would not be in a downtown Los Angeles hotel with this fairly ugly carpet.

When I asked Imran Khan for an autograph he picked up his bat to hit me.

The good Lord added an extra dash of forehead when making me.

I can fight with all actors, I can face them and win, but I cannot fight aliens.

I’d love to romance Aishwarya Rai. But I’m 58 now. So I have to play her father.