She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother.
Norman Bates: Where are you going?Norman Bates: I didn't mean to pry.Marion Crane: I'm looking for a private island.Norman Bates: What are you running away from?Marion Crane: Why do you ask that?Norman Bates: People never really run away from anything. The rain didn't last long, did it? 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 in mine. I don't mind it anymore.Marion Crane: Oh, but you should. You should mind it.Norman Bates: Oh, I do...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.
Sam Loomis: You mean the old woman I saw tonight wasn't Mrs. Bates?Sheriff Al Chambers: Now wait a minute, Sam, are you *sure* you saw an old woman?Sam Loomis: Yes! In the house behind the motel! I called and I pounded, but she just ignored me!Sheriff Al Chambers: You mean to tell me you saw Norman Bates' mother?Lila Crane: It had to be - because Arbogast said so too. And the young man wouldn't let him see her because she was too ill.Sheriff Al Chambers: Well, if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates... who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery?
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.