The Exorcist quotes

View Quote [possessed voice] Your mother sucks ****s in hell, Karras, you faithless slime.

View Quote [possessed voice, to father Karras] You killed your mother. You left her alone to die.

View Quote Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. We may ask what is relevant but anything beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don't listen to him. Remember that - do not listen.

View Quote Lt. Kinderman: If certain British doctors never asked "What is this fungus?" we wouldn't today have penicillin, correct?

View Quote Father Dyer: My idea of Heaven is a solid white nightclub with me as a headliner for all eternity, and they LOVE me.

View Quote Karras: Mama, I could take you somewhere where you'd be safe. You wouldn't be alone. There would be people around. You know, you wouldn't be sitting here listening to a radio.
Mother: [speaks in Greek] ...You understand me? This is my house and I'm not going no place. Dimmy, you're worried for something?
Karras: No, Mama.
Mother: You're not happy. Tell me, what is the matter?
Karras: Mama, I'm all right, I'm fine, really I am.

View Quote Chris: [about a Ouija board] Wait a minute, you need two.
Regan: No ya don't. I do it all the time.
Chris: Oh yeah. Well let's both play.
...
Chris: You really don't want me to play, huh?
Regan: No, I do. Captain Howdy said no.
Chris: Captain who?
Regan: Captain Howdy.
Chris: Who's Captain Howdy?
Regan: You know, I make the questions and he does the answers.

View Quote Karras: It's my mother, Tom. She's alone. I never should have left her. At least in New York, I'd be near, I'd be closer.
Tom: Could see about a transfer, Damien.
Karras: I need re-assignment, Tom. I want out of this job. It's wrong. It's no good.
Tom: You're the best we've got.
Karras: Yeah, not really. It's more than psychiatry, and you know that Tom. Some of their problems come down to faith, their vocation and meaning of their lives, and I can't cut it anymore. I need out. I'm unfit. I think I've lost my faith, Tom.

View Quote Chris: What made you say that, Regan? Do you know, sweetheart?
Regan: Mother? What's wrong with me?
Chris: It's just like the doctor said. It's nerves, and that's all. OK? You just take your pills and you'll be fine, really. OK?

View Quote Dr. Klein: It's a symptom of a type of disturbance in the chemical-electrical activity of the brain. In the case of your daughter, in the temporal lobe - it's up here - in the lateral part of the brain. It's rare, but it does cause bizarre hallucinations and usually just before a convulsion...the shaking of the bed. It's doubtless due to muscular spasms.
Chris: Oh no. No, no. That was not a spasm. Look. I got on the bed. The whole bed was thumping and rising off the floor and shaking - the whole thing, with me on it!
Dr. Klein: Mrs. MacNeil, the problem with your daughter is not her bed, it's her brain.
Chris: So, uhm, what causes this...?
Dr. Klein: A lesion. A lesion in the temporal lobe. It's a kind of seizure disorder.
Chris: Now look Doc, I really don't understand how her whole personality could change.
Dr. Klein: The temporal lobe is very common...It could last for days or even weeks. It isn't rare to find destructive, even criminal behavior.
Chris: Hey, do me a favor, will ya? Tell me somethin' good.
Dr. Klein: Don't be alarmed. If it's a lesion, in a way she's fortunate. All we have to do is remove the scar.

View Quote Chris: Well give me an example, like what specifically did she say?
Dr. Klein: Specifically Mrs. MacNeil she advised me to keep my fingers away from her goddamned ****.

View Quote Dr. Klein: She's heavily sedated. She'll probably sleep through tomorrow.
Chris: What was going on in there? How could she fly off the bed like that?
Dr. Klein: Pathological states can induce abnormal strength. Accelerated motor performance. Now, for example, say a 90 pound woman sees her child pinned under the wheel of a truck. Runs out and lifts the wheels a half a foot up off the ground - you've heard the story - same thing here. Same principle, I mean.
Chris: So what's wrong with her?
Dr. Klein: We still think the temporal lobe.
Chris: Oh what are you talking about, for Christ's sakes? Did you see her or not? She's acting like she's ****ing out of her mind, psychotic, like a... split personality or ...
Dr. Klein: There haven't been more than a hundred authentic cases of so-called split personality, Mrs. MacNeil. Now I know the temptation is to leap to psychiatry. But any reasonable psychiatrist would exhaust the somatic possibilities first.
Chris: So, what's next?
Dr. Klein: A pneumoencephalogram, I would think. Pin down that lesion. It will involve another spinal.
Chris: Oh, Christ!
Dr. Klein: What we missed in the EEG and the arteriograms could conceivably turn up there. At least, it would eliminate certain other possibilities.

View Quote Chuck: I suppose you heard.
Chris: Heard what?
Chuck: You haven't heard. Burke's dead. He must have been drunk. He fell down from the top of the steps right outside. By the time he hit M Street, he broke his neck.

View Quote Psychiatrist: When I touch your forehead, open your eyes. How old are you?
Regan: Twelve.
Psychiatrist: Is there someone inside you?
Regan: Sometimes.
Psychiatrist: Who is it?
Regan: I don't know.
Psychiatrist: Is it Captain Howdy?
Regan: I don't know.
Psychiatrist: If I ask him to tell me, will you let him answer?
Regan: No!
Psychiatrist: Why not?
Regan: I'm afraid.
Psychiatrist: If he talks to me, I think he'll leave you. Do you want him to leave you?
Regan: Yes.
Psychiatrist: I'm speaking to the person inside of Regan now. If you are there, you too are hypnotized and must answer all my questions. Come forward and answer me now.
[Regan growls and contorts on the bed]
Psychiatrist: Are you the person inside of Regan? Who are you?
[Regan slams her fist into the Psychiatrist's groin]

View Quote Kinderman: Well, this desecration in the church. Do you think this has anything to do with witchcraft?
Karras: Maybe. Some rituals use the Black Mass. Maybe.
Kinderman: And now, Dennings, you read how he died?
Karras: In a fall.
Kinderman: Let me tell ya how, and please Father, confidential. Burke Dennings, good Father, was found at the bottom of those steps leading to M Street with his head turned completely around - facing backwards.
Karras: It didn't happen in the fall?
Kinderman: It's possible. Possible, however -
Karras: ...unlikely.
Kinderman: Exactly. So on the one hand, we've got a witchcraft kind of murder, and on the other hand a Black Mass type desecration in the church.
Karras: You think the killer and the desecrator are the same?
Kinderman: Maybe somebody crazy. Somebody with a spite against the church. Some unconscious rebellion.
Karras: A sick priest - is that it?
Kinderman: Look, Father, this is hard for you. Please, I understand, but for priests on the campus here, you're the psychiatrist. You know who was sick at the time, who wasn't. I mean, this kind of sickness. You'd know that.
Karras: I don't know anyone who fits that description.
Kinderman: Ah! Doctor's ethics! If you knew, you wouldn't tell, huh?
Karras: No, I probably wouldn't.
Kinderman: Not to bother you with trivia, but a psychiatrist, in sunny California no less, was put in jail for not telling the police what he knew about a patient.
Karras: Is that a threat?
Kinderman: No, I mention it only in passing.
Karras: Incidentally, I mention it only in passing. I could always tell the judge it was a matter of confession.