The Number 23 2007 quotes

14 quotes · 3 characters
The Number 23 (2007) poster
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The Number 23 quotes

Agatha Sparrow

You would never hurt anyone.

[whispering in a dark, eerie, but calm voice]

How do you know?

[finding a knife in her purse, laughing in disbelief]

What's this for, Ag? What are you going to do with this?

Agatha Sparrow

I... I took it to protect us. From... whoever we were going to meet at the mailbox facility.

Intending to kill that poor old man who you got to publish your book? To protect your little secret?

Agatha Sparrow
[Flashback]

I'll take care of it!

[Present]

He was ALIVE before you sent us away!

Agatha Sparrow

Robin will hear you.

Oh, we wouldn't want that, would we? We wouldn't want our son to know the horrible truth about his mother!

[walks in]

Mom? Dad? What's going on?

She's Topsy Kretts; she wrote the book!

Agatha Sparrow

No, it's not true. Now your father's going to put down the knife. Aren't you, Walter?

Tell him the truth.

Agatha Sparrow

Walter...

Tell him... how you took the skeleton.

Agatha Sparrow

Yes, Isaac and I took the skeleton...

You did?

Agatha Sparrow

And I'd do it again! But I did not write the book.

Don't lie! 13 years. 13 years of lies! NO MORE!

Agatha Sparrow

Don't do this to us, Walter!

Mom, who wrote the book?

Tell him who wrote it. [whispering] Tell him.

Agatha Sparrow

...You wrote the book, Walter.

[In the bookstore, first holding the book and taking a look at it]

The Number 23. A Novel of Obsession by Topsy Kretts. A heart wrenching odyssey into paranoia. One of the most horrifying metamorphoses ever told. Beware the dog next door.

Chapter 23. You can call me Fingerling. My real name is Walter. Walter Paul Sparrow. What you've read so far is not the whole truth. Much has been changed to protect the innocent... and the guilty. I once read that the only philosophical question that matters is whether or not to commit suicide. I guess that makes me a philosopher. You can say it was my inheritance. After my mother's death, my father couldn't cope. He didn't leave a note... just a number. That number followed me from foster home to foster home till college when I met her: Laura Tollins. I thought she'd help me forget my father's number. It was a mistake to think I could escape it. I loved her. And I thought she loved me. Until my father's number returned to haunt me. That **** number... When I circled every 23rd letter of her note... it became clear. The number had gone after me. And now it wanted her. I was right. She was in danger. I just didn't realize the danger was me. What began as a suicide note, turned into something more. Much, much more.

Once upon a time there was a dog. Lived a life of terror, feared no one. Although his teeth were sharp, and his belly full, his heart was empty. He decided to go on a journey to a land far far away. But he came upon a wooden shack one day with a thin old man inside, and he invited him in. The dog was overjoyed, and that night warm smoke billowed from the chimney above. Oh, what odd smelling smoke this was. You see, the land was China, and in China they eat dogs.

Skeletons can't just get up and walk away! You were right. That man wasn't the killer, the real killer is still out there and he knows dad's onto him.

There's no such thing as destiny. There are only different choices. Some choices are easy, some aren't. Those are the really important ones, the ones that define us as people.

To die there in the street would have been easy. But it wouldn't have been justice, at least not the justice fathers teach their sons about. I'll be sentenced in a week or so. My lawyer says the judge will look kindly upon me for turning myself in. Maybe it's not the happiest of endings, but it's the right one. Some day I'll be up for parole, and we can go on living our lives. It's only a matter of time. Of course, time is just a counting system — numbers with meaning attached to them — isn't it?