The Night of the Hunter Quotes

Rachel Cooper: Get your state troopers out here. I got something trapped in my barn.

Rev. Harry Powell: There are things you do hate, Lord. Perfume-smellin' things, lacy things, things with curly hair.

Rev. Harry Powell: [when he notices John staring at the words "love" and "hate" tattooed across his knuckles] Ah, little lad, you're staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I'll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one agin t'other. Now watch 'em! Old brother left hand, left hand he's a fighting, and it looks like love's a goner. But wait a minute! Hot dog, love's a winning! Yessirree! It's love that's won, and old left hand hate is down for the count!

Rachel Cooper: It's a hard world for little things.

Rachel Cooper: A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Wherefore by their fruits, ye shall know them.

Ben Harper: I robbed that bank 'cause I got tired of seein' children roamin' the woodlands without food, children roamin' the highways in this here Depression, children sleepin' in old abandoned car bodies and junk heaps. And I promised myself that I'd never see the day when my younguns had want.

Rev. Harry Powell: Salvation is a last-minute business, boy.

Rev. Harry Powell: She'll not be back. I reckon I'm safe in promising you that.

Rev. Harry Powell: I can hear you whisperin' children, so I know you're down there. I can feel myself gettin' awful mad. I'm out of patience children. I'm coming to find you now.

Rachel Cooper: I'm a strong tree with branches for many birds. I'm good for something in this world, and I know it too.

Rachel Cooper: You know, when you're little, you have more endurance than God is ever to grant you again. Children are man at his strongest. They abide.

Icey Spoon: [about the conjugal bed] When you've been married to a man for forty years you know all that don't amount to a hill of beans. I've been married to Walt that long and I swear in all that time I just lie there thinkin' about my canning.

Icey Spoon: [about sex in marriage] A woman's a fool to marry for that. That's somethin' for a man. The Good Lord never meant for a decent woman to want that. Not really want it. It's all just a fake and a pipe dream.

Willa Harper: I feel clean now. My whole body's just a-quiverin' with cleanness.

Rev. Harry Powell: Not that you mind the killings! There's plenty of killings in your book, Lord...

Rev. Harry Powell: Chiiilll... dren!

Rev. Harry Powell: Lord, you sure knew what you were doing when you brung me to this very cell at this very time. A man with ten thousand dollars hid somewhere, and a widder in the makin'.

Rev. Harry Powell: There's too many of them. I can't kill the world.

Birdie Steptoe: Man of my age needs a little snort in the morning, heat the boilers.

Icey Spoon: A husband's one piece of store goods you never know 'til you get it home and take the paper off.

Willa Harper: The boy's as stubborn and as mulish as a sheep.

Rev. Harry Powell: Open that door, you spawn of the devil's own strumpet!

Rachel Cooper: She'll be losing her mind to a tricky mouth and a full moon, and like as not, I'll be saddled with the consequences.

Rachel Cooper: Women is fools. All.

Rachel Cooper: Women are such durn fools.

Pearl Harper: [singing] Once upon a time there was a pretty fly. He had a pretty wife, this pretty fly. But one day she flew away, flew away. She had two pretty children, but one night these two pretty children flew away, flew away, into the sky, into the moon.

Rachel Cooper: [to Ruby, sobbing in her lap] Child... You were looking for love, Ruby, in the only foolish way you knew how.

Town's Children: Hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hung hang hing. See the robber swing. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hing hang. Hing hang hung. Now my song is done. Hing hang hung. See what the hangman done. Hung hang hing. See the robber swing. Hing hang hing hang hing hang hing hang. Hing hang hung.

Rachel Cooper: Lord save little children. The wind blows, and the rains are cold. Yet they abide.

Birdie Steptoe: They'll think it was me. They'll think it was poor old Uncle Birdie. Ah, if you could have seen it, Bess, down there in the deep place, with her hair waving soft and lazy like meadow grass under flood water, and that slit in her throat, like she had an extra mouth. You're the only human mortal I can go to, Bess. If I go to the law, they'll hang it on me. Sweet heavens, save poor old Uncle Birdie.

John Harper: Don't he never sleep?

Rev. Harry Powell: Speak boy, where's it hid? Speak. Speak, or I'll cut your throat and leave you to drip like a hog hung up in butcherin' time.