Quotes

Others

[after Meineke's body is dug up] I knew darn well it was the same feller. 'Course, he's changed some. Uh, being buried in the earth does it.

Dialogue

Professor Charles Rankin: You're not much changed. Put you back in your old uniform, you'd look very much the same. Konrad Meinike: Franz, I am a different man than before. Professor Charles Rankin: I, too. I, too, am different, Konrad. You know how I gathered and destroyed every single item in Germany and Poland that might have served as a clue to my identity. Well, guess what I'll be doing at 6:00 tonight. Standing before a minister of the gospel with a woman's hand in mine, the daughter of a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, a famous liberal. The girl's even good to look at. Yes, the camouflage is perfect. Who would think to look for the notorious Franz Kindler in the sacred precincts of the Harper School, surrounded by the sons of America's first families? And I'll stay hidden... till the day when we strike again. Konrad Meinike: Franz! There will be another war? Professor Charles Rankin: Well, of course.

Dialogue

Mary Longstreet: [about Prof. Charles Rankin] Hello, father. Has anybody seen my brand new husband? Judge Longstreet: Don't tell me he's deserted you already. Mary Longstreet: Yes, it looks as if, the brute.

Dialogue

Mr. Wilson: Do you know Germany, Mr. Rankin? Professor Charles Rankin: I'm sorry, I...I have a way of making enemies when I'm on that subject. I get pretty unpopular. Mr. Wilson: Well, we shall consider it the objective opinion of an objective historian. Professor Charles Rankin: Historian? A psychiatrist could explain it better. The German sees himself as the innocent victim of world envy and hatred, conspired against, set upon by inferior peoples, inferior nations. He cannot admit to error, much less to wrongdoing, not the German. We chose to ignore Ethiopia and Spain, but we learned from our own casualty list the price of looking the other way. Men of truth everywhere have come to know for whom the bell tolled, but not the German. No! He still follows his warrior gods marching to Wagnerian strains, his eyes still fixed upon the fiery sword of Siegfried. And in those subterranean meeting places that you don't believe in, the German's dream world comes alive when he takes his place in

Dialogue

Mr. Wilson: Forepaw's muddy. No mud on hind. Dry leaves mixed with the mud. Red must have been digging somewhere in the woods. Noah Longstreet: Have you any idea what for, Mr. Wilson? Mr. Wilson: A body, I think. Meinike's.

Dialogue

Mary Longstreet: Why are you packing? Are we going somewhere? Professor Charles Rankin: We aren't, dearest. I am. Mary Longstreet: What are you talking about? Professor Charles Rankin: As a rule, men leave their wives because they don't love them, but...I must leave you because I do. Oh, you won't object once you know the kind of man you've married. Mary Longstreet: But you are the man I've married, and that's all that matters. Darling, I meant it when I said for better or for worse. Even to... Professor Charles Rankin: To killing Red? Mary Longstreet: You couldn't have. It was an accident. Professor Charles Rankin: No, I meant to kill him. Murder can be a chain, Mary, one link leading to another until it circles your neck. Red was digging at the grave of the man I killed. Yes, your little man. Mary Longstreet: You killed him? Professor Charles Rankin: With these hands. The same hands that have held you close to me. Now are you satisfied to let me go?

Dialogue

Mary Longstreet: Mr. Wilson, I've never... I've never so much as even seen a Nazi. Mr. Wilson: Well, you might without your realizing it. They look like other people and act like other people - when it's to their benefit.

Dialogue

Mary Longstreet: Why do you want me to look at these horrors? Mr. Wilson: All this you're seeing, it's all the product of one mind. The mind of a man named Franz Kindler. Franz Kindler. Yes, he was the most brilliant of the younger minds from the Nazi party. It was Kindler who conceived the theory of genocide, mass depopulation of conquered countries. So that regardless of who won the war, Germany would emerge the strongest nation in Western Europe, biologically speaking.

Dialogue

Mary Longstreet: Did you kill Noah? Professor Charles Rankin: Yes, if he goes to the church and climbs up that ladder! Mary Longstreet: It was I you intended to kill, wasn't it? Professor Charles Rankin: No. Mary Longstreet: Why wasn't it I? Franz Kindler! Kill me. Kill me, I want you to. I couldn't face life knowing what I've been to you and what I've done to Noah. But when you kill me, don't put your hands on me! [hands Charles a gun] Here!

Dialogue

Mary Longstreet: I came to kill you. Professor Charles Rankin: No, no, Mary, it's you that's going to die. You were meant to fall through that ladder. Mary Longstreet: You're going to fall. I don't mind if I take you with me. Professor Charles Rankin: You are a fool. They've searched the woods. I watched them. Here, like God, looking at little ants. I'll hide in the woods. They won't search there again. In a day or two, they'll be sure I got out of town. Mary Longstreet: When they find me, they'll know you're still here. Professor Charles Rankin: But, darling, you're on the verge of a breakdown. Now you've cracked. Why else would you leave your bed, climb to an empty church tower in the dead of night? Any child could see you'd wind up killing yourself. Killing is what led you here. It won't help you now.

Dialogue

Mr. Wilson: Look out the window. Look! Professor Charles Rankin: Well, that's... that's an old trick, Mr. Wilson, a very poor trick. Mr. Wilson: Tricks. That's all you know is tricks. I don't need any tricks! And no matter what happens to me, tricks won't do you any good. You're finished, Herr Franz Kindler. Mr. Wilson: The citizens of Harper, they've come after you. The plain, little, ordinary people, the ones you've been laughing at, Herr Franz Kindler! Well, you can't fool them anymore. Oh, sure, you can kill me, Mary, half the people down there, but there's no escape. You had a world and it closed in on you till there was only Harper. That closed in on you and there was only this room! And this room, too, is closing in on you! It's not true, the things they say I did. It was all their idea. Professor Charles Rankin: I followed orders. Mr. Wilson: You gave the orders. Professor Charles Rankin: I only did my duty. Don't send me back to them. I can't face them. I'm not a criminal. Mr.