Quotes

[when asked if it was true that she doesn't take showers] It's actually, honestly true. And not because of the shooting of it. It was the seeing of it. It never dawned on me how truly vulnerable we are. But that's what [Alfred Hitchcock] did. A shower. A bird. All these things that are absolutely ordinary, he made extraordinary.

Psycho (1960) gave me very wrinkled skin. I was in that shower for seven days - 70 setups. At least, he [Alfred Hitchcock] made sure the water was warm.

I don't know what it is I exude. But whatever it is, it's whatever I am!

[on working with Alfred Hitchcock] Hitch relished scaring me. When we were making Psycho (1960), he experimented with the mother's corpse, using me as his gauge. I would return from lunch, open the door to the dressing room and propped up in my chair would be this hideous monstrosity. The horror in my scream, registered on his Richter scale, decided which dummy he would use as the Madame.

[on her Psycho (1960) co-star, the late Anthony Perkins] To me, he was a leading man. But to the rest of the world, he will always be Norman Bates. People just wouldn't let him be anything else.

[on Night of the Lepus (1972)] I've forgotten as much as I could about that picture.

[on getting second billing to Tony Curtis in Houdini (1953), when her career was more established than his] I will always take second billing to my husband. I don't care if he's made one picture and I've made a hundred.

There's a difference in product. I mean, Boys Don't Cry (1999) would never have been made when -- when we were younger.

I did probably the three most well-known pictures of my career in my 30s. I mean, Psycho (1960), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Touch of Evil (1958) were all -- I was 30, you know, 34. Bye Bye Birdie (1963) was 35-'6.