Psycho quotes

View Quote Californian Charlie: I'm in no mood for trouble.
Marion Crane: What?
Charlie: There's an old saying, "First customer of the day is always the trouble!" But like I say, I'm in no mood for it so I'm gonna treat you so fair and square that you won't have one human reason to give me...
Marion Crane: Can I trade my car in and take another?
Charlie: Do anything you've a mind to. Bein' a woman, you will. That yours?
Marion Crane: Yes, it's just that -- there's nothing wrong with it. I just --
Charlie: -- sick of the sight of it! Well, why don't you have a look around here and see if there's somethin' that strikes your eyes and meanwhile I'll have my mechanic give yours the once over. You want some coffee? I was just about --
Marion Crane: No, thank you. I'm in a hurry. I just want to make a change, and --
Charlie: One thing people never oughtta be when they're buyin' used cars and that's in a hurry. But like I said, it's too nice a day to argue. I'll uh -- shoot your car in the garage here.

View Quote Charlie: It's the first time the customer ever high-pressured a salesman. I figure roughly... your car plus seven hundred dollars.
Marion Crane: Seven hundred dollars?
Charlie: You always got time to argue money, huh?
Marion Crane: All right.

View Quote Lila Crane: Look, that old woman, whoever she is, she told Arbogast something. I want her to tell us the same thing.
Sam Loomis: Hold it, you can't go up there.
Lila Crane: Why not?
Sam Loomis: Bates.
Lila Crane: Then, let's find him. One of us can keep him occupied while the other gets to the old woman.
Sam Loomis: You'll never be able to hold him still even if he doesn't want to be held. And, I don't like you going into that house alone.
Lila Crane: I can handle a sick old woman!

View Quote Norman Bates: You-you eat like a bird.
Marion Crane: [Looking around at the stuffed birds] And you'd know, of course.
Norman Bates: No, not really. Anyway, I hear the expression 'eats like a bird' -- it-it's really a fals-fals-fals-falsity. Because birds really eat a tremendous lot. But I-I don't really know anything about birds. My hobby is stuffing things. You know -- taxidermy. And I guess I'd rather stuff birds because I hate the look of beasts when their stuffed -- you know, foxes and chimps. Some people even stuff dogs and cats -- but, oh, I can't do that. I think only birds look well stuffed because -- well, because they're kind of passive to begin with.

View Quote Lila Crane: She left home on Friday. I was in Tuscon over the weekend and I haven't heard from her since -- not even a phone call. Look if you two are in this thing together, I don't care -- It's none of my business -- but I want to talk to Marion and I want her to tell me it's none of my business! And then I'll go--
Sam Loomis: Bob! Run out and get yourself some lunch, will you?
Bob Summerfield: Oh, that's okay, Sam, I brought it with me.
Sam Loomis: Run out and eat it!

View Quote Sam Loomis: You never did eat your lunch, did you?
Marion Crane: I better get back to the office. These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid.
Sam Loomis: Why don't you call your boss and tell him you're taking the rest of the afternoon off? It's Friday, anyway -- and hot.
Marion Crane: What do I do with my free afternoon? Walk you to the airport?
Sam Loomis: Well, you could laze around here a while longer.
Marion Crane: Hmm. Checking out time is 3 PM. Hotels of this sort are interested in you when you come in, but when your time is up. Oh Sam, I hate having to be with you in a place like this.
Sam Loomis: Married couples deliberately spend an occasional night in a cheap hotel.
Marion Crane: I know marriage can do a lot of things deliberately.
Sam Loomis: You sure talk like a girl who's been married.
Marion Crane: Sam, this is the last time.
Sam Loomis: For what?
Marion Crane: For this, meeting you in secret so we can be secretive. You come down here on business trips. We steal lunch hours. I wish you wouldn't even come.
Sam Loomis: All right, what do we do instead? Write each other lurid love letters?

View Quote Norman Bates: You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion Crane: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.
Norman Bates: I was born into mine. I don't mind it anymore.
Marion Crane: Oh, but you should. You should mind it.
Norman Bates: Oh, I do, [laughs] but I say I don't.
Marion Crane: You know -- if anyone ever talked to me the way I heard -- the way she spoke to you...
Norman Bates: Sometimes -- when she talks to me like that -- I feel I'd like to go up there, and curse her, and-and-and leave her forever! Or at least defy her! But I know I can't. She's ill.

View Quote Norman Bates: Now, mother, I'm going to uh, bring something up...
Norman Bates' Mother: Haha... I am sorry, boy, but you do manage to look ludicrous when you give me orders.
Norman Bates: Please, mother.
Norman Bates' Mother: No! I will not hide in the fruit cellar! Ha! You think I'm fruity, huh? I'm staying right here. This is my room and no one will drag me out of it, least of all my big, bold son!
Norman Bates: They'll come now, mother! He came after the girl and now someone will come after him. Please, mother, it's just for a few days, just for a few days so they won't find you!
Norman Bates' Mother: 'Just for a few days'? In that dark, dank fruit cellar? No! You hid me there once boy, and you'll not do it again, not ever again, now get out! I told you to get out, boy.
Norman Bates: I'll carry you, mother.
Norman Bates' Mother: Norman! What do you think you're doing? Don't you touch me, don't! Norman! Put me down, put me down, I can walk on my own...

View Quote Sam Loomis: I've been doing all the talking so far, haven't I? I thought it was the people who were all alone all the time who did most of the talking when they got the chance. Here you are doing all the listening. You're alone here aren't you? Drive me crazy.
Norman Bates: I think that would be a rather extreme reaction, don't you?
Sam Loomis: Just an expression. What I meant was, I'd do just about anything to get away, wouldn't you?
Norman Bates: No.

View Quote Sam Loomis: I'm not saying that you shouldn't be contended here, I'm just doubting that you are. I think if you saw the chance to get out from under you would unload this place.
Norman Bates: This place? This place happens to be my only world. I grew up in that house up there. I happen to have a very happy childhood. My mother and I were more than happy.

View Quote Norman Bates: If you love someone, you don't do that even if you hate them. You understand that I don't hate her -- I hate what she's become. I hate the illness.
Marion Crane: Wouldn't it be better if you put her... someplace.
Norman Bates: You mean an institution? A madhouse?
Marion Crane: No, I didn't mean it like --
Norman Bates: [suddenly angry] People always call a madhouse "someplace", don't they? "Put her in someplace."
Marion Crane: I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound so uncaring.
Norman Bates: What do you know about caring? Have you ever seen the inside of one of those places? The laughing, and the tears, and the cruel eyes studying you? My mother there? Oh, but she's harmless! She's as harmless as one of those stuffed birds!
Marion Crane: I am sorry. I only felt... it seems she's hurting you. I tried to mean well.
Norman Bates: People always mean well! They cluck their thick tongues, and shake their heads and suggest, oh, so very delicately! Of course, I've suggested it myself. But I hate to even think about it. She needs me. It-it's not as if she were a maniac -- a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you.
Marion Crane: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough. Thank you.
Norman Bates: Thank you, Norman.
Marion Crane: Norman.

View Quote Caroline: [taking pill bottle out of purse] I've got something -- not aspirin. My mother's doctor gave them to me the day of my wedding. Teddy was furious when he found out I had taken tranquilizers!
Marion Crane: [applying lipstick] There any calls?
Caroline: Teddy called me -- my mother called to see if Teddy called. Oh, your sister called to say she's going to Tucson to do some buying and she'll be gone the whole weekend, and --
[coversation interrupted]

View Quote Dr. Fred Richmond: No. I got the whole story -- but not from Norman. I got it... from his mother. Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half-existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over. Probably for all time.
Lila Crane: Did he kill my sister?
Dr. Fred Richmond: Yes -- and no.

View Quote Dr. Fred Richmond: Like I said... the mother... Now to understand it the way I understood it, hearing it from the mother... that is, from the mother half of Norman's mind... you have to go back ten years, to the time when Norman murdered his mother and her lover. Now he was already dangerously disturbed, had been ever since his father died. His mother was a clinging, demanding woman, and for years the two of them lived as if there was no one else in the world. Then she met a man... and it seemed to Norman that she 'threw him over' for this man. Now that pushed him, over the line and he killed them both. Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all... most unbearable to the son who commits it. So he had to erase the crime, at least in his own mind. He stole her corpse. A weighted coffin was buried. He hid in the body in the fruit cellar. Even treated it to keep it as well as it would keep. And that still wasn't enough. She was there! But she was a corpse. So he began to speak for her, give her half his life, so to speak. At times, he could be both personalities, carry on conversations. At other times, the mother half took over completely. Now he was never all Norman, but he was often only mother. And because he was so pathologically jealous of her, he assumed that she was jealous of him. Therefore, if he felt a strong attraction to any other woman, the mother side of him would go wild. [to Lila] When he met your sister, he was touched by her... aroused by her. He wanted her. That set off the 'jealous mother' and 'mother killed the girl' Now after the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep. And like a dutiful son, covered up all traces of the crime he was convinced his mother had committed!
Sam Loomis: Why was he dressed like that?
District Attorney: He's a tranvestite!
Dr. Fred Richmond: Ah, not exactly. A man who dresses in women's clothing in order to achieve a sexual change, or satisfaction, is a transvestite. But in Norman's case, he was simply doing everything possible to keep alive the illusion of his mother being alive. And when reality came too close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion -- he dressed up, even to a cheap wig he bought. He'd walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice. He tried to be mother! And uh now he is. Now that's what I meant when I said I got the story from the mother. You see, when the mind houses two personalities, there's always a conflict, a battle. In Norman's case, the battle is over -- and the dominant personality has won.
Al Chambers: And the forty thousand dollars? Who got that?
Dr. Richmond: The swamp. These were crimes of passion, not profit.
Police Officer [entering room with blanket on arm] He feels a little chill. Can I bring him this blanket?
Dr. Richmond: [lighting cigarette] Oh, sure.
Police Chief James Mitchell: All right.