MacReady quotes

View Quote [talking into tape recorder] I'm gonna hide this tape when I'm finished. If none of us make it, at least there'll be some kind of record. The storm's been hitting us hard now for 48 hours. We still have nothing to go on. [turns off tape recorder and takes a drink of whisky. He looks at the torn long johns and turns it back on] One other thing: I think it rips through your clothes when it takes you over. Windows found some shredded long johns, but the nametag was missing. They could be anybody's. Nobody... nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired. Nothing else I can do, just wait... R.J. MacReady, helicopter pilot, US outpost number 31. [turns off recorder]

View Quote I know I'm human. And if you were all these things, then you'd just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn't want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation. It'll fight if it has to, but it's vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody left to kill it. And then it's won.

View Quote We're gonna draw a little bit of everybody's blood... 'cause we're gonna find out who's The Thing. Watching Norris in there gave me the idea that maybe every part of you bas**** is a whole. Every piece of you is self-sufficient, an animal unto itself. When a man bleeds, it's just tissue. But blood from one of you Things won't obey. It's a newly formed individual with a built-in desire to protect its own life. When attacked, your blood will try and survive — and crawl away from a hot needle, say.

View Quote [on finding a partially-assembled spaceship beneath the tool shed] Blair's been busy out here all by himself.

View Quote [the Thing roars at MacReady] YEAH, **** YOU TOO!!! [throws stick of dynamite]