mooooooommmm ur face smells like tylenol!

Wilkie Collins was addicted to laudanum, a 10% solution of opiate in alcohol. He got it for a case of gout, and never stopped downing the stuff. One day, his servant, curious about his happy juice, poured for himself a big-ass glass, riiiight to the top same as Wilkie downed on the daily.
Killed the poor motherfucker. Like ahhhhhhhhhh mmmmm booom dead.
Wilkie went on to invent detective fiction. Go figure.

Alfred Hitchcock

François Truffaut: In the course of our conversations we've gone into the dreamlike quality of many of your films, among them Notorious, Vertigo, and Psycho. I'd like to ask whether you dream a lot.


Alfred Hitchcock: Not too much ... sometimes ... and my dreams are very reasonable. In one of my dreams I was standing on Sunset Boulevard where the trees are, and I was waiting for a Yellow Cab to take me to lunch. But no Yellow Cab came by; all the automobiles that drove by me were of the 1916 vintage. And I said to myself, "It's no good standing here waiting for a Yellow Cab because this is a 1916 dream!" So I walked to lunch instead.


A.H.: Sex on the screen should be suspenseful, I feel. If sex is too blatant or obvious, there's no suspense. You know why I favor sophisticated blondes in my films? We're after the drawing-room type, the real ladies, who become whores once they're in the bedroom.


A.H.: Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. The story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?


A.H.: The fact is I practice absurdity quite religiously!

- François Truffaut, Truffaut/Hitchcock

monomyth

"For centuries Daedalus has represented the type of artist-scientist: that curiously disinterested, almost diabolic human phenomenon, beyond the normal bounds of social judgment, dedicated to the morals not of his time but of his art. He is the hero of the way of though - singlehearted, courageous, and all full of faith that the truth, as he finds it, shall make us free.

... Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

Joseph Campbell - The Hero With a Thousand Faces