“People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person really thinks or feels.”

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.

Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement and, occasionally, a hearty meal.

Revenge is sweet and not fattening.

Frequently, only silence can express my prayer.

I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent.

Thoughts and words form your mental image. And since we become what we picture be sure your thoughts and words express prosperity and blessing rather than poverty and defeat.

I sing to the realists, people who accept it like it is. I express problems. There are tears when it’s sad and smiles when it’s happy. It seems simple to me, but for some people, I guess feelin’ takes courage.

Creating characters is just another way to express a type and put that type to use.

What I’m fighting for now in my work… for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.

The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.