Norman Bates: Hate the smell of dampness, don't you? It's such a, I don't know, creepy smell.

Norman Bates: I don't set a fancy table, but the kitchen's awful homey.

Norman Bates: I think I must have one of those faces you can't help believing.

Norman Bates: It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?
Marion Crane: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough.

Norman Bates: Mother! Oh God, mother! Blood! Blood!

Norman Bates: She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother.

Norman Bates: Uh-uh, Mother-m-mother, uh, what is the phrase? She isn't quite herself today.

Norman Bates: Well I'm not a fool. And I'm not capable of being fooled! Not even by a woman.

Norman Bates: Well, a son is a poor substitute for a lover.
Marion Crane: Why don't you go away?
Norman Bates: What, to a private island like you?
Marion Crane: No, not like me.
Norman Bates: I couldn't do that. Who would look after her? The fire in her fireplace would go out. It would be cold and damp up there like a grave. If you love sombody, you wouldn't leave them even if they treat your badly. Do you understand? I don't hate my mother. I hate at what she's become. I hate her illness.

Norman Bates: You know what I think? I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.
Marion Crane: Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.
Norman Bates: I was born into mine. I don't mind it anymore.
Marion Crane: Oh, but you should. You should mind it.
Norman Bates: Oh, I do
[laughs]
Norman Bates: but I say I don't.
Marion Crane: You know - if anyone ever talked to me the way I heard - the way she spoke to you...
Norman Bates: Sometimes - when she talks to me like that - I feel I'd like to go up there - and curse her - and-and-and leave her forever! Or at least defy her! But I know I can't. She's ill.