Alfred Hitchcock was a British-born filmmaker, producer and screenwriter, famous for being the promoter of the suspense and psychological thriller genres in Hollywood films.
After moving from silent films in England, Hitchcock developed himself in the American cinema, using anxiety and fear as his personal hallmark to create interesting and cult films. If you are interested in knowing better the mind behind all this creativity, you will like this selection of Alfred Hitchcock’s best quotes
1. Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.
Horror movies awaken our adrenaline.
2. Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
His greatest strength was creating a very tense atmosphere in his films.
3. In feature films the director is God. In documentaries, God is the director.
On the importance of direction in cinema.
4. There is something more important than logic: it is imagination.
Imagination is what awakens emotions.
5. A movie is good, when the price of dinner, the movie ticket and the garage were worth it.
When it becomes an experience.
6. There is more emotion, realism, intrigue, violence and interest in a love novel than in most thriller films.
Drama occurs in any everyday event.
7. Word games are the highest form of literature.
Leave a clear message indirectly.
8. This fear complex is ingrained in every individual.
We are all afraid of something.
9. There is no terror in the explosion, only in the anticipation of it.
It is not the action, but what directs us to it.
10. Wherever possible, the public should be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the climax of the story.
About what there is and what should not be revealed to the public.
11. The length of a film should be directly related to the resistance of the human bladder.
Reflecting on how long a good movie should last.
12. Luck is everything… My good luck in life was being a really scary person.
An example of how we can use our fears as a strength.
13. The ideal husband understands every word his wife doesn’t say.
Non-verbal communication says more than our words.
14. Never judge a country by its politicians.
Countries are more than their rulers. It is its people and its culture.
15. Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more excitement.
What attracted him most about suspense is that he can use all his imagination.
16. Many movies are about life, mine are like a piece of cake.
Little but very pleasant and tempting.
17. In a good marriage, each person is the other’s better half.
In any relationship, the goal should be to improve individually and as a team.
18. I am full of fears and I do everything possible to avoid difficulties and any type of complications.
Therefore, he preferred a quiet and calm life.
19. I always try to tell a story in a cinematic way, through a succession of shots and film fragments in between.
Using film techniques to tell their stories.
20. A child’s best friend is his mother.
A child’s relationship with his mother is fundamental.
21. Silent films were the purest form of cinema.
Complimenting the film guy he started with.
22. When we think that someone has hurt us in the past, we create defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the scary past causes a scary future and the past and the future become one.
The best thing to do when faced with wounds is to seek to heal them, to avoid closing ourselves off from new experiences.
23. People don’t always express their inner thoughts to each other.
24. I always try to see things as if I remember them three years later.
Hitchcock thought about the future.
25. Man does not live by murder alone. He needs affection, approval, encouragement, and occasionally a good meal.
That is why villains must also be given a daily life.
26. To make a great movie you need three things: the script, the script, and the script.
The script is everything for a good plot.
27. Until the husband understands absolutely every word his wife has said, he will not be truly married.
An interesting reflection on the interaction within marriage.
28. For me, the cinema is four hundred seats to fill.
It’s entertaining every person in the audience.
29. Unfortunately the sound created by man has never obtained the purity of the sound obtained by the animal.
Talking about the history of the origin of bagpipes.
30. It is very likely that it was because of the impression that Poe’s stories made on me that I dedicated myself to filming suspense films.
Talking about one of his inspirations.
31. Watching a murder on television can help us unload our own feelings of hate. If they do not have hateful feelings, they can be obtained in the advertising interval.
One of the events that make our emotions explode.
32. Never turn your back on a friend.
The worst betrayal is the one that comes from someone you consider a great friend.
33. All the love scenes that began on the set continue in the locker room.
Many actors take their passions from the screen into their private lives.
34. A look at the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality.
As the saying goes, ‘reality is stranger than fiction’.
35. I am a typescript director.
The way I perceived his artistic direction.
36. In many of the films being made now, there is very little cinema. They are mostly what I call ‘photographs of people talking’.
A criticism of the way other directors made films.
37. There is a clear difference between “suspense” and “surprise” and yet many images continually confuse them.
An expected confusion in his works, since he knew how to mix them.
38. In the movies the murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and how complicated it is to kill a man.
It is a process that seeks to adhere to reality.
39. Mystery is an intellectual process… But suspense is essentially an emotional process.
That’s why Hitchcock fuses both.
40. Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, tenderly carried out in simple, homely places like the kitchen table.
Could these be the perfect crimes?
41. In reality, there is nothing to winning. That is if you are lucky enough to have a sharp eye, a quick mind and no scruples.
There are victories that need to be won with a dark heart.
42. Our primary function is to create an emotion and our secondary function is to maintain those emotions.
Perpetuate the emotions throughout the film.
43. I’ve never really liked women who hang sex around their necks like they were trinkets. I think it should be discovered.
Bringing his love of mystery to all his tastes.
44. There is nothing better than a burial at sea, it is simple, orderly and not very incriminating.
An interesting way to be in eternal rest.
45. I can’t read fiction without visualizing each scene. The result is that it becomes a series of images rather than a book.
A very visual person.
46. ​​My love for cinema is greater than my morals.
What are you willing to do to achieve perfection?
47. I am not against the police; I’m simply afraid of them.
One of the things he preferred to avoid, an encounter with the police.
48. I don’t want to seem immodest, but I can’t help but compare what I have tried to put in my films with what Poe put in his stories.
Finding a similarity between the two.
49. Self-plagiarism is style.
Can we plagiarize something that is ours?
50. When an actor comes to me telling me that he wants to discuss his character, I tell him: It’s in the script. If he tells me: But what is my motivation?, I tell him: Your salary.
An example of how he dealt with actors.
51. If I had made Cinderella, people would have looked for a body in the horse-drawn carriage.
Without a doubt, an interesting plot to watch.
52. I apologize for the blood displayed on today’s program. Next time we will try to do better.
An ironic comment on the criticism of his way of making films.
53. I don’t understand why we have to experiment with cinema. I think everything should be done on paper.
For Hitchcock, no film could be made without having the entire story on paper.
54. Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen.
A homely spirit.
55. I enjoy playing to the public like a piano.
Leaving emotions on the surface.
56. A conversation can be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person is really thinking or feeling.
Listen not only to the words they say to you, pay attention to their gestures.
57. Making a film means, above all, telling a story. That story may be improbable, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human.
It should be an expression of people’s lives.
58. We all go a little crazy sometimes.
We all have the capacity to go crazy.
59. Reality is something that none of us can bear, at any time.
That’s why we look for things that take us away from it for a while.
60. I know what it’s like to feel alone and helpless and have the whole world against me.
Hitchcock was never oblivious to the feeling of feeling rejected and isolated.
61. I like everything around me to be crystal clear and completely calm.
Having a calm life is the best thing to enjoy.
62. The only way to get rid of my fears is to make movies about them.
An example of how art can be a catharsis.
63. One should never prepare a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life.
Hitchcock was carried away by spontaneity.
64. I believe in putting horror in the audience’s mind, and not necessarily on the screen.
He worked to offer an experience to the audience, not the plot.
65. If I’m not going to be myself, who will?
A beautiful reflection on being ourselves.
66. I have the feeling that inside you, somewhere, there is someone that no one knows.
We all have a hidden character that few know.
67. I am lucky to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero could not make a good suspense movie.
Using his weakness as his greatest source of inspiration.
68. If it’s a good movie, the sound could play and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of ​​what was happening.
It is the image that attracts us.
69. The more successful the villain, the more successful the image.
The success of a villain is what we come to feel as viewers.
70. I’m sure anyone likes a good crime, as long as they’re not the victim.
Nobody wants to suffer a crime.
71. Ideas come from everything.
A good idea can come from anywhere around us.
72. Fear is not that difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all scared when we were kids?
It is a natural response.
73. Revenge is sweet and does not make you fat.
The best dessert.
74. I don’t want to seem disloyal to television, but I think reading will do you good.
Television entertains, but books give us knowledge.
75. Imagine a man sitting on his favorite couch at home. Below is a bomb ready to explode. He ignores it, but the public knows it. This is suspense.
What makes us hooked on a plot.
76. Film your murders as love scenes and film your love scenes as murders.
Love and suspense as one.
77. I am a writer and therefore automatically a suspicious character.
About the excessive imagination of writers.
78. What is drama but life with the boring parts cut out?
It is what leads us to search for more.
79. Television has done a lot for psychiatry: not only has it spread its existence, but it has contributed to making it necessary.
Television can have a negative effect on people’s development.
80. Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What scares us today is exactly the same kind of thing that scared us yesterday.
