Alfred Hitchcock Quotes

“In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.”

“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.”

“I never make up anything. I get everything from my books. They're all true!" --Ann Newton/Shadow of a Doubt (1943)”

“Tim and Fritz Lang I loved working with. Not Hitchcock so much. There was no communication.”

“Žižek seems to have got Hitchcock out of his system, if not out of his unconscious—one never does that.”

“Drama is real life – with the dull parts left out.” Alfred Hitchcock”

“I put it to the great man [Hitchcock], the key to fictitious terror is partition or containment: so long as the Bates Motel is sealed off from our world, we want to peer in, like at a scorpion enclosure. But a film that shows the world is a Bates Motel, well, that's... the stuff of Buchloe, dystopia, depression. We'll dip our toes in a predatory, amoral, godless unive3rse, but only our toes.”

“Blake dug a hand into our popcorn.Jayden leaned forward. “Aurora, perhaps you can reconcile our debate. Is Hitchcock horror or suspense?”“Suspense,” Tristan said.“Horror,” Logan countered.“You thought Sleepless in Seattle was horror,” Tristan said. “All that lovey-dovey stuff gave you nightmares.”“Sad but true,” Jayden confirmed.”

“Twenty to life, she got, with time off for good behavior. You come around next spring. I'll introduce you.”

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