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

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.

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.

I would almost say that the best screen actor is the man who can do nothing extremely well.

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

I’m trying everything. But voice work is the best thing you ever imagined. It’s not about how you look, and you can go to work in your PJs.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.

Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature

Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: Eat out.

I’m at my best in a messy, middle-of-the-road muddle.

Talent is never enough. With few exceptions the best players are the hardest workers.

Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one’s reactions, answerable to no one’s views.

the best way to sharpen a knife is not to whet one side of it only. And neither can you solve a riddle by considering only one end of it.