"Betty: When I was four, just four years old, I went to my mother and I said, "What's this hole in my chin?" - I saw this dimple in my chin in the mirror, and didn't know what it was. And my mother said - get what my mother says - she says, "When you're born, you go on a assembly line past God, and if He likes you, He says, [grabs her cheeks with both her hands] "You cute little thing!" and you get dimples there. And if He doesn't like you, He goes, [presses one finger on her chin] "Go away." So about six months later, my mother found me saying my prayers, and I was going, [holds one hand over her chin] "Now I lay me down to sleep..." My mother says, "What are you covering up your chin for?" And I said, "Because if I cover up the hole, maybe He'll listen to me.""

"Catherine Van Oost: You're a strange person, Robert. I mean, what will you come to? If a person has no love for himself, no respect for himself, no love of his friends, family, work, something - how can he ask for love in return? I mean, why should he ask for it?"

"Palm Apodaca: People. Animals are not like that. They're always cleaning themselves. Did you ever see, umm... pigeons? Well, he's always picking on himself and his friends. They're always picking bugs out of their hair all the time. Monkeys too. Except they do something out in the open that I don't go for."

"There isn't anybody gonna look after you AND love you, as good as I do."

"[out of his car during a traffic jam, yelling at other motorists] Ants! Why don't we all line up like a goddamned bunch of ants! Its the most beautiful part of the day!"

"[to his father] I don't know if you'd be particularly interested in hearing anything about me. My life, most of it doesn't add up to much that I could relate as a way of life that you'd approve of. I move around a lot, not because I'm looking for anything really, but because I'm getting away from the things that get bad if I stay. Auspicious beginnings. You know what I mean? I'm trying to imagine your half of this conversation. My feeling is, I don't know, if you could talk we wouldn't be talking. That's pretty much the way that it got to be before I left. Are you all right? I don't know what to say. Tita suggested that we try to, I don't know— [sobs] I think that she feels that we've got some understanding to reach. She totally denies the fact that we were never that comfortable with each other to begin with. The best that I can do is apologize. We both know that I was never really that good at it anyway. I'm sorry it didn't work out."

"If you wouldn't open your mouth, everything would be just fine."

"Gail Threlkeld - Girl"

"Bryan Montgomery - Boy"

"John Carter - Rich man"

"Gary Littlejohn - Sheriff"

"Alan Vint - Deputy"

"Ramon Bieri - Cato"

"Warren Oates - Holly's Father (Mr. Sargis)"

"Sissy Spacek - Holly Sargis"

"Martin Sheen - Kit Carruthers"

"He was 25 years old. He combed his hair like James Dean. She was 15. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. For a while they lived together in a tree house. In 1959, she watched while he killed a lot of people."

"In 1959 a lot of people were killing time. Kit and Holly were killing people."

"Don't worry now, I'm gonna get you off these charges. There's a whole lot of other boys out there waitin' for ya. You're gonna have a lot of fun. Boy, we rang the bell, didn't we? I'll say this though, that guy with the deaf maid? He's just lucky he's not dead, too. Course, uh, too bad about your dad...We're gonna have to sit down and talk about that sometime."

"[to his arresting officers] Well, you boys have performed like a couple of heroes. And don't think I'm not gonna pass it around when we get to town."

"Name's Carruthers. Believe I shoot people every now and then. Not that I deserve a medal."

"You get a little money in your pocket, you think all your problems are solved. Well, let me tell you, they're not."

"[on a recording] Listen to your parents and teachers. They got a line on most things, so don't treat 'em like enemies. There's always an outside chance you can learn something. Try to keep an open mind. Try to understand the viewpoints of others. Consider the minority opinion, but try to get along with the majority of opinion once it's accepted. Of course, Holly and I have had fun, even if it has been rushed, and uh, so far, we're doing fine, hadn't got caught. Excuse the grammar."

"I'll give you a dollar if you eat this collie."

"[on a recording] My girl Holly and I have decided to kill ourselves, same way I did her Dad. Big decision, huh? Uh, the reasons are obvious, and I don't have time to go into them right now. But uh, one thing, though. He was provoking me when I popped him. That's what it was like, a Pop! We're sorry, I mean, uhm, nobody's coming out of this thing happy, especially not us. I can't deny we've had fun, though. I mean, uhm, that's more than I can say for some. That's the end of the message. I run out of things to say. Thank you."

"[to Mr. Sargis] Suppose I shot you. How'd that be?"

"I got it all planned - and, uh, I'm taking Holly off with me."

"Somebody dropped a bag on the sidewalk. Everybody did that, the whole town'd be a mess."

"Kit and I were taken back to South Dakota. They kept him in solitary, so he didn't have a chance to get acquainted with the other inmates, though he was sure they'd like him, especially the murderers. Myself, I got off with probation and a lot of nasty looks. Later, I married the son of the lawyer who defended me. Kit went to sleep in the courtroom while his confession was being read, and he was sentenced to die in the electric chair. On a warm spring night, six months later, after donating his body to science, he did."

"Often, I've wondered what was going through Kit's head before they got him, and why he didn't make a run for it while he still had the chance. Did he figure they'd just catch him the next day? Was it despair? He claimed to having a flat tire, but the way he carried on about it, I imagine this is false."

"Kit knew the end was coming. He wondered if he'd hear the doctor pronounce him dead, or if he'd be able to read what the papers would say about him the next day, from the other side. He dreaded the idea of being shot down alone, he said, without a girl to scream out his name. Then, for an instant, the sight of the mountains in the dawn light got his hopes back up."

"We took off at sunset, on a line toward the mountains of Saskatchewan, for Kit a magical land beyond the reach of the law. He needed me now more than ever, but something had come between us. I'd stopped even paying attention to him. Instead, I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth, where nobody could read them. That night we moved closer to the border, and clear across the prairie, at the very edge of the horizon. We could make out the gas fires of the refineries at Missoula, while to the south, we could see the lights of Cheyenne, a city bigger and grander than I'd ever seen. I felt all kind of things looking at the lights of Cheyenne, but most important, I made up my mind to never again tag around with a hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was. Finally, I found the strength to tell Kit this. I pointed out that even if we got to the Far North, he still couldn't make a living."

"He took and buried some of our things in a bucket. He said that nobody else would know where we'd put 'em, and that we'd come back someday, maybe, and they'd still be sitting here, just the same, but we'd be different. And if we never got back, well, somebody might dig 'em up a thousand years from now and wouldn't they wonder!"

"We lived in utter loneliness, neither here nor there. Kit said that solitude was a better word, 'cause it meant more exactly what I wanted to say. Whatever the expression, I told him we couldn't go on living this way... "I feel like a, kind of like an animal living out here. There's no place to bathe and not any place to get anything good to eat."...In the distance, I saw a train making its way silently across the plain, like a caravan in The Adventures of Marco Polo. It was our first taste of civilization in weeks, and I asked Kit if we could have a closer look."