Quotes from the Movie The Man Who Wasnt There

Me, I don't talk much... I just cut the hair.

Ed Crane

Maybe there I can tell her all those things they don't have words for here.

Ed Crane

Sooner or later everyone needs a haircut.

Ed Crane

My wife and I have not performed the sex act in many years.

Ed Crane

Dry cleaning. Was I crazy to be thinking about it?

Ed Crane

Heavens to Betsy, Birdy!

Ed Crane

Time slows down right before an accident, and I had time to think about things. I thought about what an undertaker had told me once - that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops. I thought, "What keeps it growing? Is it like a plant in soil? What goes out of the soil? The soul? And when does the hair realize that it's gone?"

Ed Crane

And then it was Riedenschneider's turn. I gotta hand it to him, he tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. He talked about how I'd lost my place in the universe; how I was too ordinary to be the criminal mastermind the D.A. made me out to be; how there was some greater scheme at work that the state had yet to unravel. And he threw in some of the old "truth" stuff he hadn't had a chance to trot out for Doris. He told them to look at me, look at me close. That the closer they looked, the less sense it would all make; that I wasn't the kind of guy to kill a guy; that I was The Barber, for Christsake. I was just like them - an ordinary man. Guilty of living in a world that had no place for me, yeah. Guilty of wanting to be a dry cleaner, sure. But not a murderer. He said I *was* modern man, and if they voted to convict me, well, they'd be practically cinching the noose around their own necks. He told them to look, not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech. It even had me going...

Ed Crane

I litigate. I don't capitulate.

Freddy Riedenschneider

They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it's Werner. Anyway, he's got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically - how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap - well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can't know the reality of what happened, or what would've happened if you hadn't-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no "what happened"? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds... our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the "Uncertainty Principle". Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy's on to something.

Freddy Riedenschneider

The more you look, the less you really know.

Freddy Riedenschneider

You say he was being blackmailed, by who? You don't know. For having an affair, with who? You don't know. Did anyone else know about it? Probably not, you don't know.

Freddy Riedenschneider

I think she'll make a very good typist.

Jacques Carcanogues

You know what you are? An enthusiast.

Birdy Abundas

Knowledge can be a curse.

Ann Nirdlinger Brewster