- [last lines]
- Max Cady: [Bowden has shot Cady and is holding the gun on him] Go ahead. I just don't give a damn.
- Sam Bowden: No. No! That would be letting you off too easy, too fast. Your words - do you remember? Well I do. No, we're gonna take good care of you. We're gonna nurse you back to health. And you're strong, Cady. You're gonna live a long life... in a cage! That's where you belong and that's where you're going. And this time for life! Bang your head against the walls. Count the years - the months - the hours... until the day you rot!
- Diane Taylor: [Diane is cuddling with Max as he is driving] Why are we going this way?
- Max Cady: Better scenery.
- Diane Taylor: What would you know about scenery? Or beauty? Or any of the things that really make life worth living? You're just an animal: coarse, lustful, bar-baric.
- Max Cady: Keep right on talkin', honey. I like it when you run me down like that.
- Diane Taylor: Max Cady, what I like about you is - you're rock bottom. I wouldn't expect you to understand this, but it's a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower.
- Diane Taylor: Protect myself? Nobody can protect themselves against a man like that. I'm scared. You can't help me.
- Charles Sievers: But I can! Now you file an assault charge and Cady'll get six months in jail.
- Diane Taylor: Six months? And after that? When he walked out of this room he said - he said to consider this only a sample. And from my limited knowledge of human nature, Max Cady isn't a man who makes idle threats.
- Max Cady: I got somethin' planned for your wife and kid that they ain't nevah gonna forget. They ain't nevah gonna forget it and neither will you, Counselor! Nevah! You'll nevah forget it.
- Nancy Bowden: Well, anyway, you're ten minutes late.
- Sam Bowden: It's a mistake to teach women how to tell time. They always use it against you.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: [Bowden has told Dutton that he's worried about Max Cady] You have a dog don't you, Sam?
- Sam Bowden: She couldn't bite through a doughnut; but she's a good barker.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: Well, that's good enough. I'll call you when they pick him up.
- Sam Bowden: [tries to pay Cady to leave town; Cady wants revenge] You shocking degenerate. I've seen the worst - the dregs - but you... you are the lowest. Makes me sick to breathe the same air.
- [leaves the bar]
- Max Cady: I suppose you thought I was gonna object to a strip search, didn't you, Chief? No, siree, not me. Like I said, I'm a cooperative guy. Hey, you better check that shirt. I got a couple of jolts of horse stashed under the collar.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: Let's make with the pants.
- Max Cady: Comin' up, Chief. Comin' up.
- Max Cady: [to Diane Taylor] Go on, tell me some more about that time when you were Queen of the Veiled Prophet's Ball.
- Max Cady: Hello, Counsellor. You remember me? Baltimore. Eight years, four months and thirteen days ago. It comin' in clear now, Counsellor?
- Sam Bowden: Cady. Max Cady.
- Max Cady: Good. I wouldn't want to think you'd forgotten me.
- Sam Bowden: Now, let me get this straight. You're not still blaming me for what you did?
- Max Cady: You still don't get the picture. Well, I can see this is gonna take a lot of time.
- Max Cady: Hey, look at that, would ya? Look at that wiggle. Maybe she thinks we don't know that's on purpose, but we've seen a thing or two, haven't we, Counsellor? You oughta be an expert on such things. I hear you got a good-lookin' wife and a daughter gonna be just like her. Give my love to the family, Counsellor. I'll be seein' ya.
- Max Cady: I'm gonna give you just one hour to get rid of your friends.
- Diane Taylor: Are you trying to pick me up?
- Max Cady: Yes.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: Has he threatened you?
- Sam Bowden: No, nothing that would hold in court. You have to know him to feel the threat.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: I asked you where you got it, boy.
- Max Cady: That could be my business, couldn't it?
- Sam Bowden: Thought it was strange when he showed up here this afternoon. I wasn't - really worried until I saw him at the bowling center. It was the way he looked at my family.
- Sam Bowden: There's nothing to worry about as long as you're careful. The police are going to keep a very close watch on the house. The chances are he's just trying to scare us anyway.
- Nancy Bowden: Marilyn stopped barking. Maybe she caught a rabbit.
- Sam Bowden: You know that Marilyn never caught a rabbit in her life.
- Nancy Bowden: If she did, do you suppose she'd eat it?
- Sam Bowden: She doesn't know rabbits are to eat.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: All we can do is act after the fact. You remember the Hoffman murder? Before she was killed, Mrs Hoffman came up here week after week telling us that her husband was going to do it, and I believed it. But I couldn't arrest the man for something that might be in his mind. That's dictatorship. Now, Sam, you're a citizen. Would you want it any other way?
- Charles Sievers: He's in the room with her now. She's over 18, but you can still get him for lewd vagrancy.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: He's one of these ardent types. You slap a cigarette out of some hoodlum's mouth, five minutes later he's down in the mayor's office yelling "police brutality" - rallying the bleeding heart squad.
- Charles Sievers: So you're a lawyer and you believe in due process. But it's your family, not mine. A type like that is an animal - so you've got to fight him like an animal. That's my advice.
- Sam Bowden: Look, Cady, maybe you can get away with dog poisoning, beating up on a little drifter, like Diane Taylor. Don't push your luck with me.
- Max Cady: [looking at Bowden's daughter] Say, she's gettin' to be - uh - gettin' to be almost as *juicy* as your wife, ain't she?
- Nancy Bowden: [sees a yacht motoring away] When can we have one like that?
- Sam Bowden: It's on our fiscal program for the year 1980.
- Charles Sievers: I can help you. No need to take a beating like this lying down. A man like that has no right to walk around free. You've got the law on your side. Why not use it? No one blames you for being afraid of Max Cady.
- Diane Taylor: You believe that I could ever - ever - in my whole life - step up and repeat - to another living soul - what that man - what he did? What about *my* family? I'm someone's daughter too. What about the newspapers in my home town? Do you think I could bear to have them read about...
- Max Cady: I like to put values on things. Like the value of eight years, the value of a family. Interesting calculations, wouldn't you say, Counsellor?
- Sam Bowden: How much do you want?
- Max Cady: Counsellor, you gotta forgive me. I'm a little slow till after my first drink. I assume we're talkin' about - dough. Is that right?
- Sam Bowden: That's right.
- Max Cady: Well, that certainly is heart-warmin'. A poor ex-convict comes to a new town lookin' for a fresh start and one of the leading citizens steps right up and offers him financial help. That's enough to renew your faith in human nature. It sure is.
- Max Cady: You're sweatin' a little, huh, Counsellor? Well, I know how it is. I sweat too. For eight solid years I sweat. You gonna buy me a drink?
- Max Cady: Well, let me see. Twenty grand. That's less than 3,000 per for my eight years. Counsellor, I don't believe you've heard of the Minimum Wage Act.
- Max Cady: I made her sit down and write me a love note - askin' me to invite her on a second honeymoon. She dated it and signed it. I made her write a lot of dirty words. Then I occupied her time for three days. You beginning to get the picture, Counsellor?
- Max Cady: When I was in the bucket, all I could think about was bustin' out and killin' somebody. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. Slow. Every single night for seven years, I killed that man. And on the eighth year, I said, "Oh, no. That's too easy. That's too fast." You know the Chinese death of a thousand cuts? First, they cut off a little toe, then a piece of your finger, piece of your ear, your nose. And I liked that better.
- Max Cady: I pumped another quart of whisky into her, threw away her dress, threw away her shoes, and gave her a fair chance to work her way home.
- Sam Bowden: Charming story.
- Sam Bowden: What would you do if she were -- attacked? Have him arrested?
- Peggy Bowden: How can you ask such a thing? Of course! What's the matter with you?
- Sam Bowden: Would you have him tried? Pull him into court? Naturally, he'd deny the whole thing. That means that Nancy would have to testify. You've never watched a child testify in such a case. Thank God you haven't. It's the clinical reports - and the questions - and the detailed answers that she'd have to give. She'd have to give them, all right, because he'd deny it, and we'd have to prove his guilt.
- Peggy Bowden: A beast like that - who'd believe him?
- Sam Bowden: No one. No one at all! But that wouldn't spare her the questions.
- Max Cady: [on the phone] Well, is this Mrs Bowden? Yeah, I knew it was. I just wanted to hear your voice again. You know somethin'? For eight years I dreamed about a chick with a voice like that - just whisperin' in my ear, real close...
- Sam Bowden: I've got it carefully worked out. Now, there's a houseboat. It's up on the Cape Fear River. It has a shore cabin, a telephone. It's isolated, hard to find. The perfect place to hide my family.
- Police Chief Mark Dutton: No place is perfect!