“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.”

The ideal husband understands every word his wife doesn’t say.

In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.

The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Seeing a murder on television can help us unload the feelings of hate themselves. If you do not have feelings of hatred, may be obtained in the advertising interval.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

Our primary function is to create an emotion and our secondary function is to sustain that emotions.

A woman, I always say, should be like a good suspense movie: The more left to the imagination, the more excitement there is. This should be her aim – to create suspense, to let a man discover things about her without her having to tell him.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

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.

Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.

Your words and wishes are cheap if they do not find expression in your actual gifts.

I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.

Every poet depends upon generations who wrote in his native tongue; he inherits styles and forms elaborated by those who lived before him. At the same time, though, he feels that those old means of expression are not adequate to his own experience.

Philistinism! – We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing.

Commercial rock ‘n’ roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression.

Around, around, Companions all, take your ground, And name the bell with joy profound! CONCORDIA is the word we’ve found Most meet to express the harmonious sound, That calls to those in friendship bound.

Women can be vivacious. We are allowed more varieties of facial expression and gestures. Men must be rocklike.