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

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

Reality is something that none of us can stand, at any time.

A woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing doesn’t want to go to the movies to watch a film about a woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing.

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.

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

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

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.

All live to die, and rise to fall.

I just hope and pray I can die with my boots on.

Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death.

Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

Nature’s law, That man was made to mourn. Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn! O Death, the poor man’s dearest friend, The kindest and the best!

I’m not afraid to die. But I’m afraid to not live.

Death I believe has many forms. It is a shapeshifter. But amongst all the forms it has, love is my favorite.

Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.