Psycho (1960) quotes

Cast
Anthony Perkins.
Janet Leigh.
Vera Miles.

A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer’s client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.

It’s not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?
– Norman Bates
Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.
– Marion Crane

Do you go out with friends?
– Marion Crane
A boy’s best friend is his mother.
– Norman Bates

The rain didn’t last long, did it? So… where are you off too?
– Norman Bates
Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.
– Norman Bates
Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’m looking for a private island someplace where I can be alone and no one can find me.
– Marion Crane
What are you running away from?
– Norman Bates
Why do you ask that?
– Marion Crane
No reason. No one really runs away from anything. It’s like a private trap that holds us in like a prison. 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.
– Norman Bates
Sometimes… we deliberately step into those traps.
– Marion Crane
I was born into mine. I don’t mind it anymore.
– Norman Bates
Oh, but you should. You should mind it.
– Marion Crane
Oh, I do…
– Norman Bates
But I say I don’t.
– Norman Bates
You know… if anyone ever talked to me the way I heard… the way she spoke to you…
– Marion Crane
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.
– Norman Bates

[voiceover in police custody, as Norman is thinking] It’s sad, when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. But I couldn’t allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man… as if I could do anything but just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. They know I can’t move a finger, and I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do… suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching… they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…”
– Norma Bates

Do you have any vacancies?
– Marion Crane
Oh, we have 12 vacancies. 12 cabins, 12 vacancies.
– Norman Bates

I think I must have one of those faces you can’t help believing.
– Norman Bates

She might have fooled me, but she didn’t fool my mother.
– Norman Bates

Mother! Oh God, mother! Blood! Blood!
– Norman Bates

Uh-uh, Mother-m-mother, uh, what is the phrase? She isn’t quite herself today.
– Norman Bates