“Mystery is an intellectual process. But suspense is essentially an emotional process.”

I’m not against the police; I’m just afraid of them.

I can’t read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.

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 hope you find someone who matches your passion and your efforts. Someone who is mentally and emotionally equipped enough to help build you back up in your time of need.

It’s tremendous what can happen when suddenly you make an emotional connection.

I think, being emotional is this thing that people think you’re not strong. They don’t look at you as a strong person, and it’s weird ‘cuz honestly being emotional has nothing to do with your strength.

I’m insane, I’m emotional, but I’d rather be that than a robot. So that’s definitely something that I wanted to get out there. Especially with Cry Baby’s story, because the album is about Cry Baby but I realized that me and her went through the same change.

As the fisherman depends upon the rivers, lakes and seas and the farmer upon the land for his existence, so does mankind in general depend upon the beauty of the world about him for his spiritual and emotional existence.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

If rejection destroys your self-esteem, you’re letting others hold you as an emotional hostage.

There is new hope among people that this dispensation can fulfill their aspirations.