Stella: The New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the workhouse.
Jeff: Oh, hello, Stella.
Stella: And they got no windows in the workhouse.

Stella: We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How's that for a bit of homespun philosophy?
Jeff: Readers Digest, April 1939.
Stella: Well, I only quote from the best.

Stella: You heard of that market crash in '29? I predicted that.
Jeff: Oh, just how did you do that, Stella?
Stella: Oh, simple. I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said. Nerves, I said. And I asked myself, "What's General Motors got to be nervous about?" Overproduction, I says; collapse. When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country's ready to let go.

Lt. Doyle: How do you do?
Lisa: We think Thorwald's guilty.

Lt. Doyle: Oh, Jeff, if you need any more help, consult the yellow pages in your telephone directory.
Lisa: Oh, I love funny exit lines.

Lisa: What's a logical explanation for a woman taking a trip with no luggage?
Jeff: That she didn't know she was going on a trip and where she was going she wouldn't need any luggage.
Lisa: Exactly.

Lisa: What's he doing? Cleaning house?
Jeff: He's washing and scrubbing down the bathroom walls.
Stella: Must've splattered a lot.
[both Jeff and Lisa look at Stella with disgust]
Stella: Come on, that's what were all thinkin'. He killed her in there, now he has to clean up those stains before he leaves.
Lisa: Stella... your choice of words!
Stella: Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin' yet.

Jeff: [into the phone] He killed a dog last night because the dog was scratching around in the garden. You know why? Because he had something buried in that garden that the dog scented.
Lt. Doyle: [voice] Like an old hambone?
Jeff: I don't know what pet names Thorwald had for his wife.

Jeff: [Lisa wants to be part of Jeff's globe-trotting life of adventure] You don't sleep much, you bathe even less and you'd have to eat things that you wouldn't want to look at while they were alive.

Jeff: Are you interested in solving this case or in making me look foolish?
Lt. Doyle: Well, if possible, both.
Jeff: Well then, do a good job of it. Go over there and search Thorwald's apartment. The whole place must be knee-deep in evidence.
Lt. Doyle: I can't do that.
Jeff: No, I mean not right now. Just wait for a while until he goes out later for drink or a paper or something. What he doesn't know woun't hurt him.
Lt. Doyle: I can't do that even if he isn't there.
Jeff: Why not? Does he have a curtesy card from the local police department?
Lt. Doyle: Now don't get me angry. This is America. Not even a detective can just walk into an apartment and search it. Why personaly, if I was caught in there, they'd have my badge within 10 minutes.
Jeff: Then make sure you don't get caught, that's all. If you find something, you have a murder. They'd probaly not care very much about a few broken house rules. If you don't find anything, the fellow's clear.