Alfred Hitchcock

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.

Content, I am not interested in that at all. I don't give a damn what the film is about. I am more interested in how to handle the material so as to create an emotion in the audience. I find too many people are interested in the content. If you were painting a still life of some apples on a plate, it's like you'd be worrying whether the apples were sweet or sour. Who cares?

I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there's somebody nobody knows about.

Ideas come from everything

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

I'm sure anyone who likes a good crime, provided it is not the victim.

Revenge is sweet and not fattening.

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

Σ' ένα διήγημα , η αγωνία είναι το χαρακτηριστικό εκείνο που σας προκαλεί την επιθυμία να συνεχίζετε να διαβάζετε για μάθετε τι θα συμβεί μετά.

Once the screenplay is finished, I'd just as soon not make the film at all ... I have a strongly visual mind. I visualise a picture right down to the final cuts. I write all this out in the greatest detail in the script, and then I don't look at the script while I'm shooting. I know it off by heart, just as an orchestra conductor needs not look at the score ... When you finish the script, the film is perfect. But in shooting it you lose perhaps 40 percent of your original conception

Puns are the highest form of literature.

"There is a distinct difference between "suspense" and "surprise," and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I'll explain what I mean.

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"

In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story."

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

Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.