Quotes

Waldo Lydecker: How singularly innocent I look this morning.

Waldo Lydecker: Love is eternal. It has been the strongest motivation for human actions throughout history. Love is stronger than life. It reaches beyond the dark shadow of death.

Mark McPherson: When a dame gets killed, she doesn't worry about how she looks.

Waldo Lydecker: Will you stop calling her a dame?

Waldo Lydecker: I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

Shelby Carpenter: I can afford a blemish on my character, but not on my clothes.

Waldo Lydecker: I'm not kind, I'm vicious. It's the secret of my charm.

Waldo Lydecker: You'd better watch out, McPherson, or you'll finish up in a psychiatric ward. I doubt they've ever had a patient who fell in love with a corpse.

[first lines]

Waldo Lydecker: [narrating off screen] I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For with Laura's horrible death, I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her, and I had just begun to write Laura's story when another of those detectives came to see me. I had him wait. I could watch him through the half-open door.

[clock chimes]

Waldo Lydecker: I noted that his attention was fixed upon my clock. There was only one other in existence, and that was in Laura's apartment, in the very room where she was murdered.

Waldo Lydecker: Have you ever been in love?

Mark McPherson: A doll in Washington Heights once got a fox fur outta me.

Waldo Lydecker: Let's not be psychiatric. But in a word, yes.

Shelby Carpenter: I knew there was something on my mind. Ah yes, will you dine with me tomorrow night?

Laura Hunt: Yes.

Shelby Carpenter: No, it's not that - it's the next night. And what about three weeks from tonight? And all the nights in between?

Laura Hunt: Shelby, you talk as if I had no other engagements!

Shelby Carpenter: And two months from now? And the month after that?

Laura Hunt: What about next year?

Shelby Carpenter: Oh, that's all settled. What about breakfast?

Laura Hunt: What about dancing?

Shelby Carpenter: What about lunch? Beautiful lunches, day after day after day?

Waldo Lydecker: My dear, either you were born on a extremely rustic community, where good manners are unknown, or you suffer from a common feminine delusion that the mere fact of being a woman exempts you from the rules of civilized conduct.

Waldo Lydecker: [Scene deleted from theater version and restored in 1990] She was quick to seize upon anything that would improve her mind or her appearance. Laura had innate breeding, but she deferred to my judgment and taste. I selected a more attractive hairdress for her. I taught her what clothes were more becoming to her. Through me, she met everyone: The famous and the infamous. Her youth and beauty, her poise and charm of manner captivated them all. She had warmth, vitality. She had authentic magnetism. Wherever we went, she stood out. Men admired her; women envied her. She became as famous as Waldo Lydecker's walking stick and his white carnation.

Laura Hunt: By stooping so low you only degrade yourself.

[last lines]

Waldo Lydecker: Goodbye, Laura.

Waldo Lydecker: [narrating off screen] Goodbye, my love.