How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Quote #4
ROY: Hold it, hold it, hold it! Is that it? Is that all you're gonna ask me? Well, I've got a couple of thousand God-damned 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. Do 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?
Roy continues to seek answers from people in authority, answers Lacombe and Laughlin can't provide. Like with the map earlier, Roy remains in the dark, but he senses that the authorities want it that way. There's disinformation flying everywhere.
Quote #5
LACOMBE: Monsieur Neary, what do you want?
ROY: [Sighs.] I just want to know that it's really happening.
Roy finds a piece of the knowledge he's sought—that the UFOs and aliens do exist and he's not crazy. But everything else is still a mystery. In his final scene, Roy boards the mother ship as part of project Mayflower and enters a place beyond human understanding. Lacombe says to him, "I envy you." So do we.
Quote #6
[Lacombe teaches the alien the hand signs for the 5-tonal phrase. The alien mirrors the hand motions, and the two smile at one another.]
We probably have the most to learn from the aliens—like how to build those cool spaceships and travel at speeds faster than light—but Lacombe shows that we can also teach them. The alien's smile suggests they're willing to learn, too. That's how they got all that awesome gear. The film's message is that the search for knowledge benefits everybody.