Michael O'Hara: It's a bright, guilty world.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: Maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: New York is not as big a city as it pretends to be.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: Once, off the hump of Brazil I saw the ocean so darkened with blood it was black and the sun fainting away over the lip of the sky.We'd put in at Fortaleza, and a few of us had lines out for a bit of idle fishing. It was me had the first strike. A shark it was. Then there was another, and another shark again, 'till all about, the sea was made of sharks and more sharks still, and no water at all. My shark had torn himself from the hook, and the scent, or maybe the stain it was, and him bleeding his life away drove the rest of them mad. Then the beasts to to eating each other.In their frenzy, they ate at themselves.You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stinging your eyes, and you could smell the death, reeking up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse... until this little picnic tonight.And you know, there wasn't one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: One who follows his nature keeps his original nature in the end.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: Personally I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband, if she'll fool a husband she'll fool me.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: Some people can smell danger. Not me.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: That's how I found her and from that moment I did not use my head, except to think about her.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: The only way to stay out of trouble is to grow old, so I guess I'll concentrate on that.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai

Michael O'Hara: Well, Mr. Bannister's picnic party was most typical of him. A lot of trouble and a great deal of money went into it, but it was no more a picnic than Bannister was a man.


--Orson Welles (as Michael O'Hara) in The Lady from Shanghai