"I'm American trained. Paramount started a London studio. When you walked in the door you might as well be in Hollywood. "

"Now comes the important rule that I always insist on: If you're going to have a crop duster, it must dust crops!"

"I prefer the camera to be as intimate as the two people are."

"The mystery form has no appeal to me, because it is merely a fact of mystifying an audience, which I don't think is enough."

"Mystery is an intellectual process... But suspense is essentially an emotional process."

"...When you put music to film, it's really sound, it isn't music per se... Music serves as either a counterpoint or a comment..."

What I'm concerned w/ is the manner of telling the story&how you put your scenes together,&in consequence create an emotion in the audience.

"Well, horror is really an extreme of fear. It's as far as you can go."

"...You have to remember the audience goes in anticipating something."

"I don't like these films where the flowers are out of focus in the foreground. I'm bored with those."

"I make the audience visualize things. And therefore, they get more out of it than if you just laid it on the line for them."

"I'm no different from the man who builds a haunted house where the skeleton jumps out."

"I don't put my personal feelings into pictures...I don't make pictures to please me. I make them to please the audience."

"I find it easier to work with actors who don't give me any trouble."

"Well, I shoot a pre-cut picture."

Re: "MacGuffins": "...the term only applies to a spy story -- it's whatever the spies are after."

"If you have to show the one scene in the picture that is the basis of the whole story, it has to be done right and well."

"Why should I please myself? That, I think, is an indulgence which too many directors do."

"Yes, it was very difficult to obtain what I wanted from her because Kim (Novak)'s head was full of her own ideas."

"I think my British films use humorous understatement."