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.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Dialogue serves as a backdrop to the visual storytelling, highlighting the power of non-verbal communication.
In this quote, Hitchcock emphasizes the importance of visual storytelling in film, suggesting that what characters say is less significant than what their expressions and actions convey. He believes that dialogue should blend with the overall soundscape, prioritizing the visual aspects that reveal deeper emotions and narratives.
Themes
DialogueVisual StorytellingCommunicationFilmExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a film studies class when discussing the importance of non-verbal cues in cinematic storytelling.
More from Alfred Hitchcock
All quotes βI can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.
Alfred HitchcockRead
I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
Alfred HitchcockRead
There is something more important than logic: imagination
Alfred HitchcockRead
One must never set up a murder. They must happen unexpectedly, as in life.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Similar quotes
I thought that Wu-Tang was the best sword style - the best sword-style of martial arts. And the tongue is like a sword. And so I say that we have the best lyrics, so, therefore, we are the Wu-Tang Clan.
RzaRead
Pertaining to a certain order of architecture, otherwise known as Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects preferred the Ironic. Recent additions to the White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of the Dorians. They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a brick.
Ambrose BierceRead
Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead
Cooking is not a craft to get into for money. The money may come, or it may not. But you must get into it for the craft and the culture.
Roy ChoiRead
Clever of me to become a critic. We critics scrutinize and show off to a higher end. For a greater good. Our manners, our tastes, our declarations are welcomed. Superior for life. Except when we're not. Except when we're dismissed or denounced as envious or petty, as derivatives and dependents by nature. Second class for life.
Margo JeffersonRead
Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead