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

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

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.

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

You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

I’m so used to being used. So I love when you call unexpected, Cause I hate when the moment is expected.

You don’t show up on game day and expect to be great. Greatness happens in practice. You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.

Happiness doesn’t always come from a pursuit. Sometimes it comes when we least expect it.

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them – preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.