In regard to the tune, we have a name in the studio, and we call it the “MacGuffin.” It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is always the necklace and in spy stories it is always the papers. We just try to be a little more original.

These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.

In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.

I never said actors were cattle. I said that actors should be treated like cattle.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

This paperback is very interesting, but I find it will never replace a hardcover book - it makes a very poor doorstop.

We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.