"Hitchcock finds women captivating but dangerous. She allures by nature but she is chief artificer in civilisation, a magic fabricator of persona whose very smile is an arc of deception."

"When you think of the visual style, when you think of the visual language of a film there tends to be a natural separation of the visual style and the narrative elements, but with the great, whether it is Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick or Hitchcock what you're seeing is inseparable, a vital relationship between the images and the story he's telling."

"I suppose what surprised me most about Hitchcock was how little he directed us. I had done a number of films for and he seemed quite meticulous in contrast. Hitchcock, however, didn't seem to direct us at all. He was a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enigmatic smile on his face."

"[Hitchcock quoted] "I'm on a diet. And I don't do crazy tricks in my pictures any more. You know what a good time I used to have in the old days, with violent cuts and dissolves and wipes, everything in the room spinning round, standing on its head, all that sort of thing. But I've stopped all that. I haven't time to waste any more on technical tricks. I like my screen well filled, every corner used, but I've no fancy theories I want the cutting and continuity to be as inconspicuous as possible. All I'm concerned with is to get the characters developed and the story clearly told, without wasting any footage. I've turned technical ascetic, kid, without either fun or luxuries.""

"When I first met Hitchcock he was writing and ornamenting sub-titles for silent pictures. He used to announce "Came the dawn" in black letters on a while ground, or tell us that "Heart spoke to heart in the hush of the evening" in white letters on a black ground. His title cards were both elegant and original, because the man simply could not help drawing. All his instincts were towards visualisation, and all his training towards draughtsmanship."

"Actually Hitch, like most heavy men, is the gentlest creature you could meet in a month of Sundays. He has done more kindly turns to out of work actors, assistants, secretaries, and mere sponging acquaintances than anyone I know in this industry. Off set he is many people's angel. On, he is frequently a fiend. Hitch has a tiny wife, who helps him with all his scenarios, and a tiny fairylike daughter, who bobs an old-fashioned curtsey to you when she speaks. These are the people who really rule his life. He is an old-fashioned person at heart, believing in the ordinary things of life, the small common decencies, the trivial events that alone make the big ones extraordinary. That is why, I am convinced, he is a good film-maker."

"During my ten-year friendship with Hitch the full name is unthinkable to anyone who knows him I have never known him fail to impress strangers with a start of surprise. He has always been chubby, but to-day he is a mellow, exuberant mountain of a man in the late thirties, whose passion is music, whose pleasure is good living, and whose genius is for visual imagery. He is a man who visualises both by instinct and training. He cannot help drawing. As he talks to you his broad, draughtsman's pencil sneaks out, and he blocks in groups and figures on the napkin or table top. When he signs his name to a letter the flourish under the signature slips into a cartoon. His Christmas cards are self-portraits, broadly satiric."

"[Explaining her initial silence on his behaviour] sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn't exist [at the time]."

"I've made it my mission ever since to see to it that while Hitchcock may have ruined my career, I never gave him the power to ruin my life."

"[Hitchcock, on the set of Marnie] I've never gone into detail about this, and I never will. I'll simply say that he suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became."

"The man with the navy-blue voice."

"Like Freud, Hitchcock diagnosed the discontents that chafe and rankle beneath the decorum of civilization. Like Picasso or Dali, he registered the phenomenological threat of an abruptly modernised world."

"Here is someone … who has an enormous, inordinate, neurotic fear of disorder. And that's from which he makes his art. He always has his people in a moment of disorder. They think they're in control, they think they have power, they think they have order, and then he just slips the rug out from under them to see what they're going to do."

"I'd like to know more about his relationships with women. No, on second thought, I wouldn't."

"Hitch is a gentleman farmer who raises goose flesh."

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

"The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema."

"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."

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

"I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are . Had the beautiful Miss Reville not accepted a lifetime contract without options as Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock some 53 years ago, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock might be in this room tonight, not at this table but as one of the slower waiters on the floor."

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

"Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints."

"Self-plagiarism is style."

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

"Puns are the highest form of literature."

"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."

"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."

"One of television's great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs."

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

"I deny that I ever said actors are cattle. What I said was, "Actors should be treated like cattle.""

"A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive and that's within yourself. Within me I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy and it's all non-productive. I'm very sensitive. A sharp word, said by a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions but when all these are removed and you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something. I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be."

"I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes … have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it."

"You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope for is to referee."

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

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."

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

"Deep inside, I am a shy man. And in the presence of colorful characters, I am a clam. I never try to out-eccentric the eccentricsǃ"

"Actors are cattle. I've always said actors are cattle. In fact, Carole Lombard once built a corral on set and put three live calves into it, in recognition of my feelings. I tell them that, and treat them as such, and we get along fineǃ"

"The lower lip definitely states that all actors are cattle—including the authorǃ"

"It still goes. But Pat is the nicest cattle I've ever seen."

"[T]he director passed off the phrase as one of his "Machiavellian quips," not to be taken seriously. "Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil," he cautioned, with a straight face. "As a matter of fact, I couldn't work if I weren't on friendly terms with them; I'll bend over backward every time. Besides, I get into each picture I make, if only for a couple of seconds—so I'm probably a frustrated actor at heart myself.""

"Hitchcock: You know that I think all actors are cattle? George Raft: Yes, I know—but I'm no actor."

"Lady: How do's it fit? wilt come together? Prudence: Hardly. Lad: Thou must make shift with it. Pride feels no Pain."

"Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks..."

"Though the most be players, some must be spectators."

"Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first."

"They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom."

"I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any."

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand"."

"It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing."