Rear Window quotes

View Quote Wife living above Thorwalds: Which one of you did it? Which one of you killed my dog? You don't know the meaning of the word 'neighbor.' Neighbors like each other, speak to each other, care if anybody lives or dies, but none of you do. But I couldn't imagine any of you bein' so low that you'd kill a little helpless, friendly dog - the only thing in this whole neighborhood who liked anybody. Did ya kill him because he liked ya? Just because he liked ya?

View Quote Jeff: 'Miss Lonelyhearts.' Well, at least that's something you'll never have to worry about.
Lisa: Oh? You can see my apartment from here, all the way up on 63rd Street?
Jeff: No, not exactly...but we have a little apartment here that's probably about as popular as yours. You remember of course 'Miss Torso,' the ballet dancer. She's like a Queen Bee with her pick of the drones.
Lisa: I'd say she's doing a woman's hardest job - Juggling Wolves.
Jeff: [watching 'Miss Torso' briefly kiss one of the men on the balcony] She picked the most prosperous-looking one.
Lisa: She's not in love with him or any of them.
Jeff: How can you tell that from here?
Lisa: You said it resembled my apartment, didn't you?

View Quote Jeff: All those trips at night with that metal suitcase. He wasn't taking out his possessions, because his possessions were still up in the apartment...in sections, and I'll tell you something else. All the telephone calls he made were long-distance. All right, now if he called his wife long-distance on the day she left, after she arrived in Meritsville, why did she write a card to him saying that she'd arrived in Meritsville? Why did she do that?
Tom: I'll run it down. And we'll get Lisa out...

View Quote Jeff: Don't, don't you ever have any problems?
Lisa: I have one now.
Jeff: So do I.
Lisa: Tell me about it.
Jeff: Why, why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?
Lisa: He likes the way his wife welcomes him home.
Jeff: Oh no. No, no, no. Not this salesman's wife. And why didn't he go to work today?
Lisa: Homework. It's more interesting.
Jeff: What's interesting about a butcher knife and a small saw wrapped in newspaper? Huh?
Lisa: Nothing, thank heaven.
Jeff: Why hasn't he been in his wife's bedroom all day?
Lisa: I wouldn't dare answer that.
Jeff: Well, listen. I'll answer it, Lisa, there's something terribly wrong.
Lisa: And I'm afraid it's with me.
Jeff: What do you think?
Lisa: Something too frightful to utter.
Jeff: He went out a few minutes ago in his undershirt. He hasn't come back yet. That would be a terrible job to tackle. Just how would you start to cut up a human body?
Lisa: Jeff, I'll be honest with you. You're beginning to scare me a little.

View Quote Jeff: I've seen it through that window. I've seen bickering and family quarrels and mysterious trips at night, knives and saws and ropes, and now since last evening, not a sign of the wife. All right, now you tell me where she is...
Lisa: Maybe he's leaving his wife, I don't know, I don't care. Lots of people have knives and saws and ropes around their houses and lots of men don't speak to their wives all day. Lots of wives nag and men hate them and trouble starts. But very very few of them end up in murder if that's what you're thinking.
Jeff: It's pretty hard for you to keep away from that word isn't it?
Lisa: You could see all that he did, couldn't you?
Jeff: Of course, I...
Lisa: You could see because the shades were up and, and he walked along the corridor and the street and the back yard. Oh Jeff, do you think a murderer would let you see all that? That he wouldn't pull the shades down and hide behind them?
Jeff: Just where he's being clever. He's being nonchalant about things...
Lisa: Oh, and that's where you're not being clever. A murderer would never parade his crime in front of an open window.
Jeff: Why not?
Lisa: [pointing to the newlyweds' window] Why, for all you know, there's probably something a lot more sinister going on behind those windows.
Jeff: Where? Oh, no comment.

View Quote Jeff: No, she's just not the girl for me.
Stella: Yeah, she's only perfect.
Jeff: She's too perfect. She's too talented, she's too beautiful. She's too sophisticated. She's too everything but what I want.
Stella: Is, um, what you want something you can discuss?
Jeff: Well, it's very simple, Stella. She belongs to that rarified atmosphere of Park Avenue, you know. Expensive restaurants, literary ****tail parties...Can you imagine her tramping around the world with a camera bum who never has more than a week's salary in the bank? If she was only ordinary.
Stella: You ever gonna get married?
Jeff: I'll probably get married one of these days, and when I do, it's gonna be to someone who thinks of life not just as a new dress, and a lobster dinner, the latest scandal. I need a woman who's willing...to go anywhere and do anything and love it. So the honest thing for me to do is just to call the whole thing off and let her find somebody else.
Stella: Yeah, I can hear you now. Get out of my life. You're a perfectly wonderful woman - you're too good for me. Look, Mr. Jefferies, I'm not an educated woman, but I can tell you one thing. When a man and a woman see each other and like each other, they ought to come together - wham! Like a couple of taxis on Broadway, not sit around analyzing each other like two specimens in a bottle.
Jeff: There's an intelligent way to approach marriage.
Stella: Intelligence! Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence. Hah! Modern marriage!
Jeff: Now, we've progressed emotionally.
Stella: Baloney! Once, it was see somebody, get excited, get married. Now, it's read a lot of books, fence with a lot of four-syllable words, psychoanalyze each other until you can't tell the difference between a petting party and a civil service exam.
Jeff: People have different emotional levels.
Stella: When I married Miles, we were both a couple of maladjusted misfits. We are still maladjusted misfits, and we have loved every minute of it.
Jeff: Well, that's fine, Stella. Now would you fix me a sandwich please?
Stella: Yes, I will. And I'll spread a little common sense on the bread. Lisa's loaded to her fingertips with love for you - I got two words of advice for you - Marry her!
Jeff: Did she pay you much?

View Quote Jeff: What do you need? Bloody footsteps leading up to the door?
Tom: One thing I don't need is heckling.

View Quote Jeff: You know, much as I hate to give Thomas J. Doyle too much credit, he might have gotten ahold of something when he said that was pretty private stuff going on out there. I wonder if it is ethical to watch a man with binoculars and a long-focus lens. Do you, do you suppose it's ethical even if you prove that he didn't commit a crime?
Lisa: I'm not much on rear-window ethics.
Jeff: Of course, they can do the same thing to me. Watch me like a bug under a glass if they want to.
Lisa: Jeff, you know if someone came in here, they wouldn't believe what they'd see.
Jeff: What?
Lisa: You and me with long faces, plunged into despair because we find out a man didn't kill his wife. We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known. You'd think we could be a little bit happier that the poor woman is alive and well. Whatever happened to that old saying: 'Love thy neighbor'?
Jeff: You know, I think I'll start reviving that tomorrow. I'll begin with 'Miss Torso.'
Lisa: Not if I have to move in to an apartment across the way and do the Dance of the Seven Veils every hour. [She lowers the blinds] The show's over for tonight. [She picks up her overnight kit of lingerie] Preview of coming attractions.

View Quote Jeff: You've got to get me out of here. Six weeks sitting in a two-room apartment with nothing to do but look out the window at the neighbors. ..If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something drastic...like what? I'm gonna get married and then I'll never be able to go anywhere.
Editor: It's about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome, bitter old man.
Jeff: Yeah, can't you just see me, rushin' home to a hot apartment to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal, the nagging wife.
Editor: Jeff, wives don't nag, they discuss.
Jeff: Is that so, that so? Maybe in the high rent district they discuss, in my neighborhood they still nag.
Editor: Well, um, you know best.

View Quote Lisa: [Listening to the composer play his piano] Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that? It's utterly beautiful. Wish I could be creative.
Jeff: Oh sweetie, you are. You have a great talent for creating difficult situations.
Lisa: I do?
Jeff: Sure. Staying here all night, uninvited.
Lisa: Surprise is the most important element of attack. And besides, you're not up on your private eye literature. When they're in trouble, it's always their Girl Friday who gets them out of it.
Jeff: Well, is she the girl that saves him from the clutches of the seductive showgirls and the overpassionate daughters of the rich?
Lisa: The same.
Jeff: That's the one, huh? It's funny, he never ends up marrying her, does he, huh? That's strange.
Lisa: Weird. Why don't I slip into something more comfortable?
Jeff: By all means.
Lisa: I mean, like the kitchen and make us some coffee.
Jeff: Oh, with some brandy too, huh?

View Quote Lisa: [referring to the composer's music] It's enchanting. It's almost as if it were being written especially for us.
Jeff: No wonder he's having so much trouble with it.
Lisa: At least you can't say the dinner isn't right.
Jeff: Lisa, it's perfect, as always.

View Quote Lisa: [Wearing her negligee] What do you think? [Jeff is speechless.] I will rephrase the question.
Jeff: Thank you.
Lisa: Do you like it?
Jeff: Yes, I like it.

View Quote Lisa: If you're saying all this because you don't want to tell me the truth, because you're hiding something from me, then maybe I can understand.
Jeff: I'm not hiding anything! It's just that...
Lisa: It doesn't make sense! What's so different about it here from over there, or any place you go, that one person couldn't live in both places just as easily?
Jeff: Some people can. Now if you'll just let me explain...
Lisa: What is it but traveling from one place to another taking pictures? It's just like being a tourist on an endless vacation.
Jeff: OK. Now that's your opinion. You're entitled to it. Now let me give you my side...
Lisa: It's ridiculous to say that it can only be done by a special, private little group of annointed people...
Jeff: I made a simple statement, a true statement, but I can back it up if you'll just shut up for a minute!
Lisa: If your opinion is as rude as your manner, I don't think I care to hear it.
Jeff: Oh, come on now, simmer down.
Lisa: You - I can't fit in here - you can't fit in there. I mean, according to you, people should be born, live and die on the same spot.
Jeff: SHUT UP! Did you ever eat fish heads in rice?
Lisa: Of course not.
Jeff: Well, you might have to if you went with me. Did you ever try to keep warm on a C-54 at 15,000 feet, 20 degrees below zero?
Lisa: Oh, I do it all the time. Whenever I have a few minutes after lunch.
Jeff: Did you ever get shot at? Did you ever get run over? Did you ever get sandbagged at night because somebody got unfavorable publicity from your camera? Did you ever...those high-heels, they'll be great in the jungle and the nylons and those six ounce lingerie...
Lisa: Three!
Jeff: All right. Three! They'll make a big hit in Finland just before you freeze to death?
Lisa: Well, if there's one thing I know, it's how to wear the proper clothes.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Well try and find a raincoat in Brazil, even when it isn't raining. Lisa. In this job, you carry one suitcase, your home is the available transportation. You don't sleep very much, you bathe less, and sometimes the food that you eat is made from things that you couldn't even look at when they're alive.
Lisa: Jeff, you don't have to be deliberately repulsive just to impress me I'm wrong.
Jeff: Deliberately repulsive! I'm just trying to make it sound good. You just have to face it, Lisa, you're not meant for that kind of a life. Few people are.
Lisa: You're too stubborn to argue with.
Jeff: I'm not stubborn - I'm just truthful.
Lisa: I know, a lesser man would have told me it was one long holiday - and I would have been awakened to a rude disillusionment.
Jeff: Oh, well now, wait a minute. Now wait a minute. If you want to get vicious on this, I'll be very happy to accommodate you.
Lisa: No, I don't particularly want that. [She rises and moves away.] So that's it. You won't stay here and I can't go with you.
Jeff: It would be the wrong thing.
Lisa: You don't think either one of us could ever change?
Jeff: Right now, it doesn't seem so.
Lisa: I'm in love with you. I don't care what you do for a living. I'd just like to be part of it somehow. It's deflating to find out the only way I can be part of it is to take out a subscription to your magazine. I guess I'm not the girl I thought I was.
Jeff: There's nothing wrong with you, Lisa. You've got this town in the palm of your hand.
Lisa: Not quite it seems. Goodbye, Jeff.
Jeff: You mean, 'Good night.'
Lisa: I mean what I said.
Jeff: Well, Lisa, couldn't we just, uh, couldn't we just keep things status quo?
Lisa: Without any future?
Jeff: Well, when am I gonna see you again?
Lisa: Not for a long time...at least not until tomorrow night.

View Quote Lisa: It doesn't make sense to me...Women aren't that unpredictable...A woman has a favorite handbag and it always hangs on her bedpost where she can get at it easily. And then all of a sudden, she goes away on a trip and leaves it behind. Why?
Jeff: Because she didn't know she was going on a trip. And where she's going she wouldn't need the handbag.
Lisa: Yes, but only her husband would know that. And that jewelry. Women don't keep their jewelry in a purse, getting all twisted and scratched and tangled up.
Jeff: Well, do they hide it in their husbands' clothes?
Lisa: They do not. And they don't leave it behind either. Why, a woman going anywhere but the hospital would always take makeup, perfume, and jewelry...That's basic equipment. And you don't leave it behind in your husband's drawer in your favorite handbag.

View Quote Lisa: Jeff, if you could only see yourself!
Jeff: Whatsa matter?
Lisa: Sitting around looking out of the window to kill time is one thing but doing it the way you are with binoculars and wild opinions about every little thing you see is, is diseased!
Jeff: What do you think I consider it - recreation?
Lisa: I don't know what you consider it, but if you don't stop it, I'm getting out of here...What is it you're looking for?