- [last lines]
- Escherich: [voice over] I read all your cards, Hobgoblin. Yours and your wife's. I am the only person who read all of them. All of them except for eighteen. Eighteen cards.
- Otto Quangel: What do you think happens to our cards?
- Anna Quangel: Why do you want to know?
- Otto Quangel: I want to know how people react.
- Anna Quangel: Some people will be afraid, probably. Afraid that someone may have watched them pick up the card. Some will, maybe, put them back. Some people will turn them in to a policeman... but, our cards will also be read by them too.
- Otto Quangel: Its like with a machine. A little sand in the gears will not stop the machine. But, if a person throws a little more sand and then more, the motor begins to stutter. The assembly line stops. In my mind, I see lots of people throwing sand into the gears.
- Anna Quangel: You are a romantic, Otto Quangel.
- Otto Quangel: I'm a mechanic.
- Anna Quangel: Ya, that too.
- Anna Quangel: Otto...
- Otto Quangel: I'm writing.
- Anna Quangel: To who?
- Otto Quangel: I don't know. I'm writing cards. Cards that tell the truth. People will read these cards. Will pass them on.
- Anna Quangel: Cards? You're scribbling cards? What is that supposed to do?
- Herr Fromm: [to Frau Rosenthal after offering to hide her in his apartment] I have a mistress whom I obey. Her name is justice.
- Frau Rosenthal: I want to be in the apartment when my husband arrives.
- Herr Fromm: He isn't coming back - and you know that, Frau Rosenthal.
- Anna Quangel: Otto, what are we doing? We've lost our son. Other people have lost, but, they - they don't...
- Otto Quangel: With this system - this regime, now, I feel that - we're free. I mean, freed - from all of it. This is how I feel.
- Escherich: It's a man who is no longer young. Who lost his only son in the French campaign. Inexperienced at writing, but intelligent. The style has visibly changed during the course of the year. In recent months he has used the title: Free Press.
- Otto Quangel: Sometimes I feel the danger - as if it was so physical. I actually feel it.
- Anna Quangel: Please, don't frighten me.
- Escherich: Think about it Quangel. Every single card was turned in to us voluntarily. We didn't find any ourselves. They couldn't wait to hand them over to us. All those people. Some were arrested. One committed suicide. How could you seriously believe that you would change anything? You! Foreman Quangel.
- Otto Quangel: Who killed himself?
- Escherich: That doesn't matter. A small fish. Insignificant.
- Otto Quangel: Everyone is significant.
- Otto Quangel: You know what will happen?
- Anna Quangel: Yes.
- Otto Quangel: It can't be changed.
- Anna Quangel: I know. Otto, it doesn't matter.