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

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.

To me Psycho was a big comedy. Had to be.

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

I’m not much into rear window ethics.

When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.

I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.

Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated, not by a single explosive burst of energy or effort, but by the constant daily application of the best you have within you.

Even in difficult and trying times I find comfort in knowing you are mine.

It’s difficult for me to imagine the rest of my life without you. But I suppose I don’t have to imagine it. I just have to live it.

It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.

The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.

Love is the Extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.