202 Quotes by Alfred Hitchcock

The picture's over. Now I have to go and put it on film.

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

In North By Northwest during the scene on Mount Rushmore, I wanted Cary Grant to hide in Lincoln's nostril and then have a fit of sneezing. The Parks Commission...was rather upset at this thought. I argued until one of their number asked me how I would like it if they had Lincoln play the scene in Cary Grant's nose.I saw their point at once.

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

I'm a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.

I never said actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

I'm frightened of my own movies.

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

Drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out.