Cary Grant credited as playing...
Roger Thornhill
- [Thornhill is wearing sunglasses to hide his identity]
- Ticket Seller: Something wrong with your eyes?
- Roger Thornhill: Yes, they're sensitive to questions.
- Eve Kendall: [Hanging by their fingers from Mount Rushmore] What happened to the first two marriages?
- Roger Thornhill: My wives divorced me.
- Eve Kendall: Why?
- Roger Thornhill: I think they said I led too dull a life.
- Roger Thornhill: Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself "slightly" killed.
- Roger Thornhill: In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only expedient exaggeration.
- [Escaping captivity, Roger Thornhill slips in through the window of a darkened hospital room. Immediately the light is snapped on. A woman patient sits up in the bed, reaching for her glasses]
- Hospital Patient: STOP!
- Roger Thornhill: [stops] Oh. Excuse me.
- [resumes moving towards the door]
- Roger Thornhill: [She has put on her glasses and gets a good look at him]
- Hospital Patient: [plaintively] Stop.
- [Thornhill pauses, turns briefly to warn her off with a raised finger, then rushes out the door]
- Eve Kendall: It's going to be a long night.
- Roger Thornhill: True.
- Eve Kendall: And I don't particularly like the book I've started.
- Roger Thornhill: Ah.
- Eve Kendall: You know what I mean?
- Roger Thornhill: Ah, let me think. Yes, I know exactly what you mean.
- Roger Thornhill: What's wrong with men like me?
- Eve Kendall: They don't believe in marriage.
- Roger Thornhill: I've been married twice.
- Eve Kendall: See what I mean?
- Roger Thornhill: No. No, Mother, I have not been drinking. No. No. These two men, they poured a whole bottle of bourbon into me. No, they didn't give me a chaser.
- Roger Thornhill: Then, then your name isn't Kaplan?
- Man at Prairie Crossing: Can't say it is, 'cause it ain't.
- Eve Kendall: I tipped the steward five dollars to seat you here if you should come in.
- Roger Thornhill: Is that a proposition?
- Eve Kendall: I never discuss love on an empty stomach.
- Roger Thornhill: You've already eaten!
- Eve Kendall: But you haven't.
- Phillip Vandamm: Mr. Kaplan, you are quite the performer. First you're the outraged Madison Avenue advertising executive who claims that he has been mistaken for someone else. Next, you play the fugitive from justice supposedly trying to clear himself of a crime he knows he didn't commit. And now, you're the jealous lover spurned by love and betrayal.
- Roger Thornhill: Apparently the only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead.
- Phillip Vandamm: Your very next role, and you'll be quite convincing, I assure you.
- Roger Thornhill: How do we know it's not a fake? It looks like a fake.
- Bidder: Well, one thing we know. You're no fake. You are a genuine idiot.
- Roger Thornhill: The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.
- Eve Kendall: What makes you think you have to conceal it?
- Roger Thornhill: She might find the idea objectionable.
- Eve Kendall: Then again, she might not.
- Roger Thornhill: I don't like the games you play, Professor.
- The Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill. Even when it's a cold one.
- Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can't lick the VanDamm's of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them and fly away with them and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars.
- The Professor: I'm afraid we're already doing that.
- The Professor: If I thought there was any chance of changing your mind, I'd talk about Miss Kendall, of whom you so obviously disapprove.
- Roger Thornhill: Yes, for using sex like some people use a flyswatter.
- Roger Thornhill: When we get out of this, you can ride the train with me again.
- Eve Kendall: Is that a proposition?
- Roger Thornhill: It's a proposal, sweetie!