43 Close Encounters of the Third Kind Quotes (2025)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Project Leader: He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Project Leader: If everything's ready here on the Dark Side of the Moon... play the five tones.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Roy Neary: I guess you've noticed something a little strange with Dad. It's okay, though. I'm still Dad.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Roy Neary: Is that it? Is that all you're gonna ask me? Well I got a couple of thousand goddamn questions, you know. I want to speak to someone in charge. I want to lodge a complaint. You have no right to make people crazy! You think I investigate every Walter Cronkite story there is? Huh? If this is just nerve gas, how come I know everything in such detail? I've never been here

before. How come I know so much? What the hell is going on around here? Who the hell are you people?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Support Leader: [Looking the returnees] They haven't even aged. Einstein was right.
Team Leader: Einstein was probably one of them.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

[last lines]
Barry Guiler: [looking up at the space ship flying away] Goodbye.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Claude Lacombe: Major Walsh, it is an event sociologique.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

David Laughlin: Have you recently had a close encounter?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Roy Neary: I wanna speak to the man in charge.
David Laughlin: Mr. Lacombe is the highest authority.
Roy Neary: He isn't even an American.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Air Traffic Controller: TWA 517 do you want to report a UFO, over? TWA 517 do you want to report a UFO, over?
TWAPilot: [over radio] Negative, we don't want to report.
Air Traffic Controller: Air East 31, do you wish to report a UFO, over?
AirEast Pilot: [over radio] Negative, we don't want to report one of those either.
Air Traffic Controller: Air East

31, do you wish to file a report of any kind to us?
AirEast Pilot: [over radio] I wouldn't know what kind of report to file, Center.
Air Traffic Controller: Uh Air East 31, uh, me neither.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Brad Neary: I don't understand these fractions.
Roy Neary: What's one third of sixty?
Brad Neary: [bewildered] That's a fraction, I don't understand them.
Roy Neary: [using a model train as an object lesson] Alright, let's say that this boxcar is sixty feet long, OK?, and one third of it is across this switch

here, alright... And now another train is coming... Now, how far do you have to move this boxcar so that the other train doesn't smash it? Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer...
[CRASH]

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

[Roy is shoveling soil into his kitchen window]
Roy Neary: Ronnie, if I don't do this, *that's* when I'm going to need a doctor.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Roy Neary: I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I've been seeing this shape. Shaving cream, pillows... Dammit! I know this. I know what this is! This means something. This is important.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

David Laughlin: We didn't choose this place! We didn't choose these people! They were invited!
Claude Lacombe: They belong here more than we.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Dirty Tricks #4: [Plotting about how to clear the Devil's Tower area of its population] Contaminated water. Affects people, crops, animals. Disease.
Dirty Tricks #3: Yeah, epidemic.
Dirty Tricks #1: What kind of disease?
Dirty Tricks #3: A plague. A plague epidemic.
Dirty Tricks #1:

Nobody's gonna believe a plague in this day and age.
Dirty Tricks #2: *Anthrax.*
Dirty Tricks #4: Ranching country.
Dirty Tricks #3: Yes!
Dirty Tricks #2: There are a lot of sheep up in those hills.
Wild Bill: Wait, that's good, that's good, I like that. But it may not evacuate

everybody. There's always some joker who thinks he's immune. What I need is something so scary it'll clear three hundred square miles of every living Christian soul.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Jillian Guiler: [on the police inquiring about her missing son] They asked me if I'd seen any strangers in the neighborhood.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

David Laughlin: Who flies crates like these anymore?
Project Leader: No one. These planes were reported missing in 1945.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Farmer: [at press conference to discuss UFOs] I saw Bigfoot once!
[everyone in thr room reacts. The Farmer stands up]
Farmer: Sequoia National Forest, 1951! It made a sound that I would not want to hear twice in my life.
[sits down]