- Nellie Woods: Sorry I'm not what you were expecting.
- Elliott Morgan: What makes you think I'm expecting anybody?
- Nellie Woods: What makes me think that dogs like liver?
- Elliott Morgan: I don't get the analogy, but I expect it's very clever. It so happens that you're wrong; there's no one coming.
- Nellie Woods: You're right. She's gone out with her husband.
- Elliott Morgan: [feigning confusion] Uh... who has?
- Nellie Woods: The liver.
- Nellie Woods: [to Elliott] If you're lying, I'll kill you and go to the chair with a song on my lips.
- Rubber-legs Ryan: [referring to Hathaway] Hey, who does he think he is?
- Dean Hutchinson: An honest man, you big-muscled pinhead!
- Shelley Mason: [introducing himself to Julie] And I'm Shelley Mason, the most distinguished and hated critic in America. You may look, but you mustn't touch.
- Elliott Morgan: [to Shelley Mason] These are Professor and Mrs. Hathaway.
- Shelley Mason: Professor of what?
- John Hathaway: Psychology.
- Shelley Mason: I never use it, I live by instinct.
- John Hathaway: Obviously.
- [Shelley gives him a nod]
- Shelley Mason: [to Julie] At the moment it tells me that you're fascinated by me and want us to be alone.
- Julie Hathaway: You better switch to psychology.
- Shelley Mason: I adore difficult women. Come.
- John Hathaway: Go along with him, Julie. Might be fun.
- Julie Hathaway: Fun? For who?
- Shelley Mason: For me... and for you. A welcome relief from your husband.
- Julie Hathaway: I doubt it.
- [they start to walk away]
- Shelley Mason: I'm a dangerous and exciting man.
- Julie Hathaway: At your age?
- Elliott Morgan: [referring to Shelley Mason] Well, how did you make out with Tugboat Annie?
- Julie Hathaway: Oh, he said I was mentally backward and physically forward and he asked me to have tea with him alone tomorrow.
- Elliott Morgan: [from behind a closed door] She locked me in here.
- Julie Hathaway: Maybe she knew what she was doing.
- Elliott Morgan: Lady, whoever you are, you sound like a woman with an understanding heart.
- Julie Hathaway: That's because I'm talking through a door.
- Freddie Bond: [to Julie, tipsily] How do you do, I'm Freddie Bond, and you're one of the loveliest sights I've ever seen.
- John Hathaway: I'm John Hathaway and this is my wife.
- Freddie Bond: You never told me you were married.
- Julie Hathaway: Well, that's silly. I've never seen you before in my life.
- Freddie Bond: [to Julie] I'm an incurable dipsomaniac. You could cure me, but you, you see how it is.
- John Hathaway: [about the unusually dressed men in the office] Who... wh... what were they?
- Morgan's Receptionist: Oh, those are five convicts that escaped from Devil's Island. They wrote a bestseller for us, and now they're trying to figure a way to get back on the island, so they can write a sequel.
- Nellie Woods: Show me a woman that's free and I'll show you a woman that sits home at night... alone.
- John Hathaway: Well, look, the very symbol of freedom is a woman. The Statue of Liberty.
- Nellie Woods: Yeah, and did you ever notice? She carries a torch!
- [Nellie quickly raises her arm imitating the Statue of Liberty]
- Elliott Morgan: You've a pretty low opinion of me, haven't you Nellie.
- Nellie Woods: Oddly enough, no. I formed my opinion of you a *long* time ago, before you had a phobia to hide in. I thought that you were one of the smartest, most ambitious young men I'd ever known... then you grew a beard.
- John Hathaway: [to "Rubber-Legs" Ryan] Love is an emotion common to all forms of animal and some of vegetable life. Orchids, catfish, and left tackles all feel love.
- John Hathaway: Rubber-legs, without you in the game Saturday we'd have a hard time beating Laurel, wouldn't we?
- Rubber-legs Ryan: Huh? Are you kidding? Well, they'd tear down the stadium!
- John Hathaway: Then maybe they'd rebuild the library they tore down to build the stadium.
- Julie Hathaway: Remember about the coffee, John. Order it during the meat course so that when you get ready to drink it, it'll be cool enough. Also, you promised me about the dentist. And John, don't wear blue trousers with a brown coat. I know men don't care much about those things, but... women do.
- Julie Hathaway: Nellie, what's happened?
- Nellie Woods: John's run amok!
- Julie Hathaway: What about?
- Nellie Woods: Elliot's beard. It's off, and it's driven John crazy!
- Julie Hathaway: [smiling] He's jealous!
- Captain Makepeace Liveright: Comes from readin' too many books. They rot out a man's brain cells.
- Julie Hathaway: Oh, shut up. You sound just like my mother!
- Elliott Morgan: I'm a very sick man. I'm a hopeless neurotic as far as women are concerned. I have an incurable inferiority complex about them.
- John Hathaway: Mm hmm. And just how does this complex manifest itself?
- Elliott Morgan: Well, the moment I become attracted to a beautiful woman belonging to someone else, I feel inferior. The result is an irresistible compulsion to take that woman away from that man.
- John Hathaway: Ah, and uh, Julie compels you, hmm?
- Elliott Morgan: The strongest compulsion I've ever felt.
- John Hathaway: Well, it's nice of you to warn me.
- Elliott Morgan: Mm, well, I try to be decent.
- John Hathaway: [as he strokes his chin, looking at Elliott's beard] But you're, uh, you're in for a tough time of it. You, uh, you haven't got a chance.
- Elliott Morgan: Hathaway, I wanna be honest with you. I am terribly attracted by your wife.
- John Hathaway: In the first place, you have no intention of being honest. That's just part of your routine. In the second place, I imagine most men are attracted by Julie. What of it?
- John Hathaway: Where did I ever get the beautiful idea of wanting to marry you?
- Julie Hathaway: When did you ever get the idea that you got the idea of wanting to marry me?
- Elliott Morgan: How are you enjoying the side show?
- Julie Hathaway: Well, compared to the rest of them you seem almost normal. Oh, no, no, I.. I didn't mean that that way.
- Elliott Morgan: Of course you did, and you're right. You see, I'm an honest neurotic. They're all more or less fakes.
- Julie Hathaway: [as they enter Elliott Morgan's with a big party underway] I never dreamed there were this many famous writers in the world.
- John Hathaway: There aren't.
- John Hathaway: [to Rubber Legs Ryan] In the examination yesterday, you turned in a blank paper, except for your thumbprints.
- Rubber-legs Ryan: [in the middle of his makeup oral exam] Oh, do we have to go and do some more? I've got a headache.
- John Hathaway: Did somebody kick ya in the head?
- Rubber-legs Ryan: Naw, I got it from thinkin'. Thinkin' always give me a headache.
- John Hathaway: That's from using muscles you've never used before. We'll continue.
- Rubber-legs Ryan: Well, the dean said if I got a headaches we could stop.
- John Hathaway: What made the Dean suspect you might get a headache?
- Rubber-legs Ryan: Suspect? It was his idea.
- John Hathaway: We're looking for Elliott Morgan.
- Freddie Bond: Don't! You won't like hm. I'm his lawyer and I ought a know.
- John Hathaway: [stands up, gives the Hitler salute, then turns and goosesteps out of the dean's office] Heil football!
- Julie Hathaway: Literary people are the strangest people.
- Elliott Morgan: I'll get you a drink. You do sell and it helps.
- John Hathaway: [looking around] A room full of living examples of what the mind can come to without discipline.
- Elliott Morgan: [looking at Julie, with John and Nellie there] Say, what about just the two of us having dinner tonight to celebrate, huh?... I mean the three of us... the four of us?
- Elliott Morgan: Beat it, Bond.
- Freddie Bond: Mrs. Hathaway and I are thinking of going away together for a while.
- Elliott Morgan: Bond, I am your only client. Unless you stop annoying this lady, you lose me.
- Elliott Morgan: Say, you've been very smug about your wife.
- John Hathaway: You know, Julie might do you a lot of good.
- Elliott Morgan: Why?
- John Hathaway: A good, solid failure would help you, but, I, I think Julie might do more than that.
- Elliott Morgan: Are you prescribing your wife for me?
- John Hathaway: That's the general idea.
- Dean Hutchinson: It's about Crazy-legs Ryan.
- John Hathaway: Rubber-legs Ryan.
- Dean Hutchinson: I was thinking of Crazy-legs Bilbo, uh, our great end. I was sorry to see him graduate.
- John Hathaway: He didn't. He just played three years and moved on.
- Dean Hutchinson: Hathaway, the trustees of this college are, um, how shall I say, practical men. Their interest in Crazy-legs... uh, Rubber-legs, is not the pedagogical one that we have. Uh, eh, it seems that they are determined to beat Laurel College this Saturday and, uh, therefore...
- John Hathaway: Shall I just change his mark to a passing grade or must we go through the formality of a reexamination?
- Dean Hutchinson: Professor Hathaway! Changing his mark would be cheating. Uh, uh, just what type of examination were you planning to give him?
- John Hathaway: Mmm, I imagine something in one syllable, no writing, and short.
- John Hathaway: Yes, sir, you should see a lot my wife, Mr. Morgan. I can see your salvation in Julie.
- Elliott Morgan: Professor Hathaway, I warn you: you're leading with your chin.
- John Hathaway: [stroking his chin, again, looking at Elliott's beard] Uh, uh, not my chin... your chin.
- Brighton: May I ask, sir, were you expecting company this evening?
- Elliott Morgan: Why? Most servants like an evening out occasionally.
- Brighton: Begging your pardon, sir, in my case I would welcome an occasional evening in. In fact sir, I'm all in from going out.
- Elliott Morgan: Well, then you won't have to go out tonight.
- Brighton: Thank you, sir.
- Elliott Morgan: I thought this was a come-as-you-are party. Why haven't you a telephone in each hand and a knife in your teeth?
- Nellie Woods: My knife is busy elsewhere: it's in your back.
- [both chuckle menacingly]
- John Hathaway: Julie, you've been very lonely. And what's worse, for the past three or four weeks you felt as if I hadn't needed you. But you should have known all along that Nellie is just somebody I was working with. And that I needed you just as much as I always have.
- Julie Hathaway: [crying] It always winds up like this, with me feeling like a rat.
- John Hathaway: I don't want you feeling like a rat.
- Julie Hathaway: I am a rat.
- Elliott Morgan: Nellie, I want you to drop everything at the office and concentrate on John and the book night and day until it's finished.
- John Hathaway: [to Julie] it's going to be pretty lonesome and boring for you.
- Nellie Woods: Wanna bet on that?
- Elliott Morgan: Now, you said yourself she was out with her husband.
- Nellie Woods: She probably pushed him in front of a taxicab just so she could be here with you. What is it you've got? Hypnotism, Yoga, or do you drop things in their coffee?
- Nellie Woods: It's probably your unalterable cheapness that gets them.
- Elliott Morgan: Cheapness?
- Nellie Woods: Oh, I won't elaborate on it.
- Julie Hathaway: [fidgeting, not paying attention to Elliott, but watching John talking with Nellie] John's just fascinated by her - she does things to him. She excites him.
- Elliott Morgan: I'm... rather excited myself.
- Julie Hathaway: She's got something I haven't got at all - can't even get. As a matter of fact, I wonder what John sees in her.
- Elliott Morgan: I could explain if you'd only hold still a minute.
- Julie Hathaway: Uh, let's go in.
- Julie Hathaway: I can't understand your not having seen it before - living in New York all your life.
- Elliott Morgan: I was waiting to see the sights with you, and now we've seen 'em all, from Grant's Tomb to The Battery.
- Elliott Morgan: Why, you, you don't dare. I'd go to pieces. You know I'm neurotic.
- Nellie Woods: Neurotic, my foot. There's nothing wrong with you that couldn't be cured with a good swift kick in the ego. You're no more neurotic than a pretzel.
- Elliott Morgan: [following Julie inside after failing to win her over] No feathers, no powder, no dust, no nothing - a perfect brush off.
- Julie Hathaway: How long have you known Miss Woods?
- Elliott Morgan: Nellie? Forever! Why?
- Julie Hathaway: She's very clever isn't she? I mean the way she practically runs your organization.
- Elliott Morgan: Oh well, that's not very important.
- Julie Hathaway: Well, maybe to you it isn't. You see, you're more like I am - not very clever and sort of un-mental...
- Elliott Morgan: [looking insulted at first] Well, that, uh, gives us something in common.
- Elliott Morgan: Okay, I give up.
- Julie Hathaway: Give up what?
- Elliott Morgan: Forget it. You're a good girl, Julie. Boy, are you a good girl. And you're your husband's wife.
- Julie Hathaway: [sitting on the sofa with John's arm around her shoulder] Two people in love.
- John Hathaway: If ever there were two.
- Julie Hathaway: Then what would you think if you came in and found Elliott and me in this posture?
- John Hathaway: Not what you're thinking.
- Julie Hathaway: Why not?
- John Hathaway: I couldn't. Granted, Nellie and I happened to be in that position when you walked in.
- Julie Hathaway: Happened?
- John Hathaway: Did I make any sudden moves? Did I take my arm away? Did I look guilty?
- Julie Hathaway: No, not even that. You sat there looking as if everything was just too normal and casual for words.
- Elliott Morgan: I always do what Nellie here says. She's sane and sound.
- Nellie Woods: Good old Nellie here: sane and sound. One day they're going to put me out to pasture.
- Elliott Morgan: [after Nellie says she's quitting] Nellie, you, you can't do this to me.
- Nellie Woods: To me, to me! I'm not doing it to anybody. I'm doing it for myself.