Alfred Hitchcock
Master of suspense
Most quoted
"The audience is like a giant organ that you and I are playing. At one moment we play this note and get this reaction, and then we play that chord and they react that way. And someday we won't even have to make a movie — there'll be electrodes implanted in their brains, and we'll just press different buttons and they'll go 'ooooh' and 'aaahh' and we'll frighten them, and make them laugh. Won't that be wonderful?"
— from Interview with François Truffaut, 1966
"I'm scared 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."
— from Interview
"Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf."
— from Interview
All quotes by Alfred Hitchcock (313)
Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf.
One never knows anything about anybody. Even one's closest friends are not really known.
The cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.
I have always encouraged my cast to speak up during shooting if they feel a scene isn't right.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
If you can't do it well, do it quietly.
The sound of a gunshot is an astonishingly sexy noise.
I never use a blueprint in making a picture.
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
There are two types of people in this world: those who want to know everything and those who don't care to know anything.
A movie is made for the general public, and the public deserves no better than its own intelligence.
I am to provide the public with what it wants, and I am here to serve it.
The best way to scare a man is to hide in the dark and then suddenly jump out.
Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
I have a feeling that within the next few decades, the adventure story will be renewed by the cinema.
Suspicion is the greatest enemy of peace of mind.
To me, the cinema is a place where one can sit in the dark and watch people make fools of themselves.
I find the best way to deal with fear is to face it head-on.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
In the old days, villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today.
Contemporaries of Alfred Hitchcock
Other Film & Theaters born within 50 years of Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980).