“Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement.”

There is something more important than logic: imagination.

I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.

I like stories with lots of psychology.

A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.

Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn’t change people’s habits. It just kept them inside the house.

Give them pleasure – the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.

Never judge a country by its politicians.

I always take the audience into account.

You think she’s pretty, you ought to see my slingshot!

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.

The Birds could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.

This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid.

One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

For me, suspense doesn’t have any value if it’s not balanced by humor.

Excitement was plentiful during my two years’ service as a Pony Express rider.

There are three intolerable things in life – cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.

Does making money excite me? No, but I have to make money for my shareholders. What excites me is achievement, doing something difficult.

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.

My films may not have a great opening, but I am not bothered about it. Whatever the numbers be, I want those viewers who come for my films to be excited about watching the movie.

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing – and then marry him.

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.

What I look for in a project is whether the storyline excites me.