“You won't answer my calls, you change your number. I mean, I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan!”
The point at which everyone--except, perhaps, for Dan Gallagher--realizes that Alex Forrest is outright crazy. Up to this point, she’s been annoying, but still relatively sympathetic. From this point forward, the sympathy begins a long, slow incessant drain until by the end of the film there is probably nothing left amongst the average person.
Bring the dog, I love animals... I'm a great cook.
This is a notable instance of foreshadowing. Alex's "love" for animals and ability to cook will eventually give rise to a new slang term for a crazy stalker lady type: "bunny boiler."
If you ever come near my family again, I'll kill you. Do you understand?
Interestingly, the wife of the man who has the affair with Alex is from this point on considered the hero of the film. This despite the fact that at the point this threat is made to Alex, Alex really hasn’t done anything any worse to her than her husband did to Alex. One might well make the argument that Beth Gallagher at this point becomes a premeditated murderer, whereas Alex is definitely mentally disturbed and committing a crime of passion.
She keeps calling the apartment. Every time Beth answers the phone, she hangs up. I'm scared Jimmy, and I don't want to lose my family.
This quotation involves irony and projection, and represents the point at which Dan loses any hope of finding sympathy from the audience. The irony is, of course, that he says he doesn’t want to lose his family and he is blaming Alex for that potential. Ironic because, of course, that was his decision to make and Alex has nothing whatever to do with that decision. The projection of his own failure as a man onto Alex is the point of emasculation for Dan; what kind of sympathy can anyone have at this point for such a total loser?
I don't think having dinner with anybody's a crime.
Except, of course, he knows it IS a crime. It is a crime against the vows of fidelity he took with his wife. Also, why lie about it to his wife? Technically speaking, adultery is not a crime, either. There are crimes in the legal sense and there are moral crimes. Dan is a moral criminal and he knows it. He’s so far into denial and so good at projecting his moral crimes onto others, however, that he really just doesn’t get it. But, of course, he will.
