James Mason movie quotes

View Quote [voiceover] What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, a veteran nymphet perhaps, this mixture in my Lolita of tender, dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity. I know it is madness to keep this journal, but it gives me a strange thrill to do so. And only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script.

View Quote [voiceover] The wedding was a quiet affair. And when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover, did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No. Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity, to some faint tenderness, even to a pattern of remorse, daintily running along the steel of his conspiratorial dagger.

View Quote [voiceover] You must now forget Ramsdale and push our lot and poor Lolita and poor Humbert, and accompany us to Beardsley College where my lectureship in French poetry is in its second semester. Six months have passed and Lolita is attending an excellent school where it is my hope that she will be persuaded to read other things than comic books and movie romances.

View Quote There is hope for the future. When the world is ready for a new and better life, all this will someday come to pass... in God's good time.

View Quote The natives over there are cannibals. They eat liars with the same enthusiasm as they eat honest men.

View Quote Captain Nemo: Do you know the meaning of love, professor?
Professor Arronax: I believe I do.
Captain Nemo: What you fail to understand is the power of hate. It can fill the heart as surely as love can.
Professor Arronax: I'm sorry for you. It's a bitter substitute.

View Quote [to Esther] You've got that little something extra that Ellen Terry talked about. Ellen Terry, a great actress long before you were born. She said that that was what star quality was - that little something extra. Well, you've got it.

View Quote You know, Oliver, I sometimes think I was born with a genius - an absolute genius - for doing the wrong thing.

View Quote I shall have to introduce myself all over again to a lot of people. They won't know me when I'm not drinking.

View Quote We're pulling back from the bridgehead in Kuban. No rear guards, not even Steiner's platoon. We're not retreating anywhere; we're running. (To Kiesel after being contacted by a general)

View Quote Colonel Brandt: What will we do when we lose the war?
Captain Kiesel: Prepare for the next one.

View Quote For many of us Germans, the exterminator is long overdue. But I have decided that you are worth saving. [...] You're a brave man. Braver than you think you are. One of these days there will be a need for brave civilians, had you thought of that? In the new Germany, if such a thing is allowed to exist, there will be a need for builders, for thinkers, for poets. I begin to see now what your job is to be. I will make this my final order to you. You will search out and contact all of these... "better people", you call them? And together you'll take on the responsibility that goes with survival. (As he orders Kiesel to evacute)

View Quote Vandamm: That wasn't very sporting, using real bullets.

View Quote Leonard: You surely would have suspected. Why else would you have decided not to tell Miss Kendall why our little treasure here has a belly full of microfilm?
Vandamm: You seem to be trying to fill mine with rotten apples.
Leonard: Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms.
Vandamm: Truth? I've heard nothing but innuendos.
Leonard: Call it my woman's intuition, if you will, but I've never trusted neatness. Neatness is always the result of deliberate planning.
Vandamm: She shot him in a moment of fear and anger. You were there yourself. You saw it. You know what I think? I think you're jealous. No, I mean it. I'm very touched, very.
[Leonard pushes Vandamm and fires Eve's gun at him...that is loaded with blanks]
Leonard: It's an old Gestapo trick. Shoot one of your own people to show that you're not one of them. They've just freshened it up a bit with blank cartridges.
...
Leonard: You're not taking her on the plane with you?
Vandamm: Of course I am. Like our friends, I too believe in neatness, Leonard.This matter is best disposed of from a great height - over water.

View Quote Vandamm: What possessed you to come blundering in here like this? Could it be an overpowering interest in art?
Roger: Yes, the art of survival.
Eve: He followed me here from the hotel.
Leonard: He was in your room?
Roger: Sure. Isn't everybody?
...
Vandamm: Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First, you're the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he's been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice, supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn't commit. And now, you play the peevish lover, stung by jealousy and betrayal. It seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actor's Studio.
Roger: Apparently, the only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead.
Vandamm: Your very next role. You'll be quite convincing, I assure you.
Roger: I wonder what subtle form of manslaughter is next on the program. Am I to be dropped into a vat of molten steel and become part of a new skyscraper, or are you going to ask this female to kiss me again and poison me to death?
[Eve tries to slap him]
Roger: Who are you kidding? You have no feelings to hurt.

View Quote Ed Concannon: Why wasn't she getting oxygen?
Dr. Towler: Well, many reasons, really...
Ed Concannon: Tell me one.
Dr. Towler: She'd aspirated vomitus into her mask.
Ed Concannon: She threw up in her mask. Now cut the bullshit, please. Just say it: She threw up in her mask.

View Quote [to Laura] I know how you feel. You don't believe me, but I do know. I'm going to tell you something that I learned when I was your age. I'd prepared a case and old man White said to me, "How did you do?" And, uh, I said, "Did my best." And he said, "You're not paid to do your best. You're paid to win." And that's what pays for this office... pays for the pro bono work that we do for the poor... pays for the type of law that you want to practice... pays for my whiskey... pays for your clothes... pays for the leisure we have to sit back and discuss philosophy as we're doing tonight. We're paid to win the case. You finished your marriage. You wanted to come back and practice the law. You wanted to come back to the world. Welcome back.