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The Spiral Staircase (1975)

Quotes

The Spiral Staircase

Edit
  • Blanche: Do you know that we have four hundred and eighty-five applications for next year's course already?
  • Dr. Sherman: You know, I swear if I propose to you, you'd file it under "applications".
  • Blanche: [pulling a book from the shelf and clearing her throat before she starts to read aloud] On page eighteen, chapter three, rule four: "Many a good secretary has married her boss. No good boss has ever married his secretary." Quote, unquote.
  • Dr. Sherman: [pointing to the now closed book in her hands] I wrote that before you came in.
  • Blanche: Why don't we go have a drink to that.
  • [last lines]
  • Dr. Rawley: [as a voice on the telephone after Helen dials his number] Hello, Dr. Rawley.
  • Helen: Jull!
  • Dr. Rawley: Yes... Hello... Hello, who is this?
  • Helen: [smiling] It's... It's Helen!
  • [first lines]
  • Dr. Rawley: [to Helen as he stands over her examining her as she has just made some wheezing sounds with her mouth wide open] Okay. Now try and yell as hard as you can.
  • [Helen opens her mouth wide and continues to make wheezing noises]
  • Dr. Rawley: [sticking a tongue depressor in her mouth] Open wide. Ah hah. Ah, ah, try to vary the pitch. Try to make a deep sound.
  • [Helen opens her mouth again and only makes more wheezing noises]
  • Dr. Rawley: [feeling her throat] Does that hurt?
  • [Helen nods negatively]
  • Dr. Rawley: [kissing her] I'm sorry, honey. I gotta make out a report for the clinic. Otherwise they'd have to do all these tests. All I want them to do is bring back your voice.
  • Blanche: It would never work out between you and me. I swear Joe, every time you kiss me you would run and gargle.
  • Mrs. Sherman: Let me thank you for the flowers and for spending a vacation with your dull old granny. No, it's good of you. This isn't exactly Honolulu.
  • Mrs. Sherman: I saw you coming home tonight. I can smell fear. Five days before my husband died he - stank of fear.
  • Blanche: I thought we were testing management skills, Professor Sherman.
  • Dr. Sherman: Well, blackmail is a management skill.
  • Blanche: Fifty men, every three weeks, and they are all so boring. You know, I get asked the same two questions, five times a day, every day. Number one: Miss Blanche, how am I doin' on this course? And number two: Eh, would you like to slip up to my room after dinner?
  • Dr. Sherman: And, eh, what do you tell them?
  • Blanche: I tell them that they are here to have their potential as executives measured and that questions like that do not get asked by the President of General Motors.
  • Nurse: No wonder that old lady is sick. You call that food?
  • Mrs. Oates: There isn't anything wrong with Mrs. Sherman that a good kick up the ass wouldn't cure.
  • Nurse: Everything except her hemorrhoids, I should imagine.
  • Mrs. Sherman: Leaves - coming down in the rain. Leaves being beaten down by the rain.
  • Mrs. Sherman: There was a time when being sick could be fun.
  • Nurse: There was a time when nursing could be rewarding.
  • Nurse: What would you like for dinner? There's chicken.
  • Dr. Sherman: There's a distinction between being dumb and being stupid. Except, in the vernacular.
  • Oates: You couldn't shake that young man loose if you tried. You'll be very happy together, Mrs. Mallory. Just like us three: me and her and the bottle.
  • Dr. Sherman: Sibling rivalry has an honorable history, you know. Cain was *awful* mean to Able.
  • Mrs. Sherman: Tell that woman not to wake me up to give me a sleeping pill.
  • Oates: I'd break the brains of anyone who tries doing anything to you, Mrs. Mallory. Break the brains.
  • Mrs. Oates: That's what he tells me.
  • Oates: And if I didn't, that nurse upstairs would.
  • Mrs. Oates: Hey, she's a better man than you are.
  • Steven: In school they told us to shower to take our minds off this kind of thing.
  • Blanche: [giggles] In Sunday school they told us to pray.
  • Steven: Oh yeah?
  • Blanche: Well, I don't know what the other girls used to pray for. I use to pray for things like this.
  • Dr. Sherman: Blanche, have you decided where you're going to take your vacation?
  • Oates: She's going to an island off Trinidad. It's called Tobago. We will be there for eight weeks.
  • [sings]
  • Oates: Sun and sand, A sarong and you...
  • Dr. Sherman: Little mouthless Helen.

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