When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, ‘It’s in the script.’ If he says, ‘But what’s my motivation?, ’ I say, ‘Your salary.’
The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
Even my failures make money and become classics a year after I make them.
Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
Ideas come from everything.
If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
One must never set up a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life.
People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another; a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person really thinks or feels.
The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.
Reality is something that none of us can stand, at any time.
Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table.
When you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you are going to create something – that’s as happy as I’d want to be.
In a good marriage each is the others better half.
A woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing doesn’t want to go to the movies to watch a film about a woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing.
Seeing a murder on television can help us unload the feelings of hate themselves. If you do not have feelings of hatred, may be obtained in the advertising interval.
Revenge is sweet and not fattening.
Someone once told me that every minute a murder occurs, so I don’t want to waste your time, I know you want to go back to work.