“Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him.”
“I always carry a pistol when I go [to the New York Public Library]. Never did trust those stone lions.”
“She was the only one left, and she was real.To be the only one, and to know that you are real - that's sanity, isn't it?But just to be on the safe side, maybe it was best to keep pretending that one was a stuffed figure. Not to move. Never to move. Just to sit here in the tiny room, forever and ever.If she sat there without moving, they wouldn't punish her.If she sat there without moving, they'd know that she was sane, sane, sane.She sat there for quite a long time, and then a fly came buzzing through the bars.It lighted on her hand.If she wanted to, she could reach out and swat the fly.But she didn't swat it.She didn't swat it, and she hoped they were watching, because that proved what sort of a person she really was.Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...”
“Everything in this business makes sense, because it serves a real purpose, fills a need that's a part of living. Even a single nail, like this one, fulfills a function. Drive it into a crucial place and you can depend on it to do a job, keep on doing it for a hundred years to come. Long after we're dead and gone, both of us.”
“All at once she could hear the sullen patter of the rain and sense the sigh of the wind behind it. She remembered the sound, because it had rained like that the day Mom was buried, the day they lowered her into that little rectangle of darkness.”
“The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.”