My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.

Robert Walker as Bruno was excellent. He had elegance and humor, and the proper fondness for his mother.

I don't set the alarm to get up. I get up when I feel like it.

I have no television - I hate it.

Ripley is married. And he's not lost. He has his feet on the ground.

I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches.

I hated cracking the whip, and these juries turn into political things.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

I prefer to live in the country where it's quiet. Woody Allen movies there are dubbed into Italian.

That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment.

I don't want to know movie directors. I don't want to be close to them. I don't want to interfere with their work. I don't want them to interfere with mine.

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.

I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.

I hope it will be set in California. In a way, I made a mistake, because a New Jersey policeman can't operate that way in New York. But in California, he can move between different counties.

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies.

I can't write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.

I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter.

I like to work for four or five hours a day. I aim for seven days a week.

Some fellow from the Third World kept hammering for prizes for a Communist film which was rotten.

I don't think Ripley is gay. He appreciates good looks in other men, that's true. But he's married in later books. I'm not saying he's very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife.

A few years ago, there were requests to me, Can we make this? I said that I have no rights. Contact the Hitchcock estate, which won't release it for a remake.

I only know it takes weeks to recover, as if one had been in a car accident.

Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.

We especially need imagination in science.

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

You want to do something that shows some type individuality and talent and imagination - at the same time, you want to be truthful to the predecessors, because obviously the audience liked something about them and you have to replicate that experience to a certain extent.

To them though, not to us, we were just a catalyst for their imagination.

In this drawing we just let our imagination run wild. We visualized Superman toys, games, and a radio show - that was before TV - and Superman movies. We even visualized Superman billboards. And it's all come true.

To put yourself in another's place requires real imagination, but by doing so each Girl Scout will be able to love among others happily.

If you use your imagination, you can look at any actress and see her nude... I hope to make you use your imagination.

Toy Soldiers was my introduction to film. I certainly didn't think I was doing art by any stretch of the imagination.

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.

I mean, the most important thing to me is imagination.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.