Shutter Island Quotes
"I haven’t laid eyes on the island in several years. The last time was from a friend’s boat that ventured into the outer harbor, and I could see it off in the distance, past the inner ring, shrouded in the summer haze, a careless smudge of paint against the sky."
"If time for me really is a series of bookmarks, then I feel as if someone has shaken the book and those yellowed slips of paper, torn matchbook covers, and flattened coffee stirrers have fallen to the floor, and the dog-eared flaps have been pressed smooth."
"It’s what you do to horses. I talked to an aunt. She told me the only time he was ever happy was at a horse farm near this rental cottage in Maine. So I went up there."
"Sometimes there’s motion, and you can’t even feel it until it climbs up inside of you."
"It was all that water. Stretched out around them until it was all that was left of the world. How Teddy believed that it could swallow the sky."
"It’s the nature of any life’s work that it have limits. That’s mine. I can only concern myself with my patients."
"The eyes themselves were too wide, as if something hot were prodding them from inside her head. Whatever she saw beyond that camera lens, beyond the photographer, beyond anything in the known world probably—wasn’t fit to be seen."
"But of all the triggers, nothing was less logical in terms of connective tissue, or more pungent in terms of effect, than water—drizzling from the tap, clattering from the sky, puddled against the sidewalk, or, as now, spread around him for miles in every direction."
"You can’t break a whole society that doesn’t want to hear what you have to say. Not if there’s only two of us."
"Once you introduce the poison into the well, how do you ever get it out of the water?"
"That’s right. What should be the last resort gradually becomes standard response."
"If you treat a patient with respect and listen to what he’s trying to tell you, you just might reach him."
"If I knew for certain that all it would take to hold her again would be to die, then I couldn’t raise the gun to my head fast enough."
"This world can only give me reminders of what I don’t have, can never have, didn’t have for long enough."
"It’s a slippery slope. Once you introduce the poison into the well, how do you ever get it out of the water?"
"Believe it or not, I believe in talk therapy, basic interpersonal skills."
"It’s the common bonding element in the disease. So most schizophrenics are also deeply superstitious. Thirteen plays into that."
"The mind, it’s an engine essentially. That’s what it is. A very delicate, intricate motor."
"I wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s not in me. But when I’m scared? Oh, the mind."
"They fill the air with cold. They fill my kneecaps."
"Because the NKPA doesn’t get weaponry like that from nowhere, honey. They got it from Stalin."
"The world’s going to blow up and I don’t even know why."
"I remember the first time I saw you at the Grove. In your uniform."
"You might have seen him first, Linda, but I’ll see him last."
"It’s just like a car. No different. One gear slips, one bolt cracks, and the whole system goes haywire."
"If you keep steering your current course, it's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when."
"I loved this woman the way you love...well, nothing. You can’t compare that kind of love to anything, can you?"
"Sometimes, though, I’d leave it there. Kiss it, smell it, what have you. Breathe her in. If I could have that hand back over my face, Doc? I’d sell the world."
"How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?"
"My IQ is off the charts, and ever since I was a boy, I could read people. Better than anyone."
"If we’d left you two alone, you’re telling me we would have come back to find you both fully clothed?"
"All the centuries we’ve studied the brain, and no one has a clue where they come from. Can you believe that?"
"Surviving isn’t just about brute strength. It’s about resilience."
"The fury of its own self-destruction creates an entirely new monster."
"Sometimes you get lucky. Don't overthink it."
"You’re the guys who got stuck with roof detail. In the fucking rain."
"You can't kill Laeddis and expose the truth at the same time. You have to make a choice."
"This place? They’re doing experiments on people. Horrible ones. And they’re getting away with it."
"God loves violence. Why else would there be so much of it? It's in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe."
"If the constraints of society were removed, and I was all that stood between you and a meal, you'd crack my skull with a rock and eat my meaty parts."
"There is no moral order as pure as this storm we've just seen. There is no moral order at all. There is only this—can my violence conquer yours?"
"If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would otherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person’s actions."
"Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms. It’s a no-win situation."
"It’s a death penalty really. Once you’re here, you’re not getting out."
"God gives us earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes. He gives us mountains that spew fire onto our heads. Oceans that swallow ships."
"He gives us disease so that in our death we believe He gave us orifices only so that we could feel our life bleed out of them."
"They’re creating ghosts here, Marshal. Ghosts to go out into the world and do ghostly work."
"You have no idea how much pain enters the body, Marshal. It has nothing to do with the flesh. The brain sends neural transmitters down through the nervous system. The brain controls pain."
"We wage war. We burn sacrifices. We pillage and tear at the flesh of our brothers. We fill great fields with our stinking dead. And why? To show Him that we’ve learned from His example."
"They think I’m dead. They think I drowned. If they come looking for you, they could find me. I’m sorry. But you have to go."
"You don’t have a partner, Marshal. You came here alone."
"Everyone wants a quick fix. We’re tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old days back, and we don’t even remember them."
"Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress."
"Human brain is over fifty percent water. You figure ol’ Mr. Moon can jerk the ocean around, think what it can do to the head."
"It’s just I’ve noticed that people on this island have a way of creating their own truth. Figure they say it’s so enough times, then it must be so."
"Forget what you heard. Forget what you think you know."
"Time to consider his options and consult with Senator Hurly and come up with a plan of attack."
"I’ve built something valuable here. But valuable things also have a way of being misunderstood in their own time."
"And you’ve created a dense, complex narrative structure in which you are the hero."
"The only reason she ever saw a psychiatrist was because she tried to commit suicide and ended up in the hospital."
"Safe," Teddy said. "So that made everything okay. Moral."
"You were my friend," Teddy said. "I trusted you. I told you about my wife. I talked to you about my father. I climbed down a fucking cliff looking for you."
"Lies," Teddy said. "Lies? Explain the anagrams. Explain how the children in those pictures—children you’ve never seen if they belonged to Rachel Solando—are the same children in your dreams."
"An honest reckoning of the self," Teddy repeated. "Gee, that’s good."
"Because she murdered our children and she needed peace."
"Are you a U.S. marshal?" "No. I was once. Not anymore."