[Of the film, Hayes once said that] Hitchcock wanted to do the movie just for fun, for relief from what he was doing regularly. ... an expensive self-indulgence, though it went over quite well whenever it reached an audience.

Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.

I'm sure anyone who likes a good crime, provided it is not the victim.

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

Content, I am not interested in that at all. I don't give a damn what the film is about. I am more interested in how to handle the material so as to create an emotion in the audience. I find too many people are interested in the content. If you were painting a still life of some apples on a plate, it's like you'd be worrying whether the apples were sweet or sour. Who cares?

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.