“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.”

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

“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.”

“Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.”

“A lot of movies are about life, mine are like a slice of cake.”

“A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.”

“Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.”

“In feature films the director is God in documentary films God is the director.”

“Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.”

“We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.”