[On Rear Window:] I’ll bet you that nine out of ten people, if they see a woman across the courtyard undressing for bed, or even a man puttering around in his room, will stay and look; no one turns away and says, “It’s none of my business.” They could pull down their blinds, but they never do; they stand there and look out.

Hitchcock argues that voyeurism is not a rare perversion but a near-universal human reflex: given an unpunished view into someone else’s intimacy, most people will watch. The line collapses the distance between “respectable” curiosity and invasive spying, suggesting that social norms (“it’s none of my business”) are weaker than desire and habit. It also functions as a meta-commentary on cinema. Rear Window makes the audience complicit: like the onlookers at the window, viewers could “pull down their blinds” by refusing the spectacle, yet they choose to keep watching. The quote therefore highlights Hitchcock’s recurring theme that suspense depends on moral participation—our appetite for seeing what we shouldn’t.