- Nick Adams: Look, what can you tell in four days?
- George: I'll tell ya what I can tell. I can tell ya that three times a day I get hungry and every twenty-four hours I get an irresistible urge to go to sleep in a bed. I don't wanna beg and I don't wanna steal. I don't want a cop tellin' me I'm a vagrant and runnin' me outta town. I'm sorry to desert you, but I'm not cut out for this kind of a life.
- Nick Adams: Listen, Dad, you're always coming to me about Mother. Why don't you go to her for me and explain to her that I'm not a boy anymore.
- Ad Francis, 'The Battler': Uh, I'm crazy...Ever been crazy, kid?
- Nick Adams: No. How's it get ya?
- Ad Francis, 'The Battler': [Confused and disoriented] I don't kn...I don't know. See, ya...ya know...see, when you got it, then...that means ya don't know about it...
- Billy Campbell: One more, bottlekeeper!
- Billy Campbell: [finishes the drink in front of him] Better make it two!
- Billy Campbell: [noticing the bartender's impatience] We keeping you up?
- Bartender: Yes, sir!
- Billy Campbell: [sarcastically] The wages of gin!
- Nick Adams: You've already had twelve drinks. How can you be thirsty?
- Billy Campbell: [Clasping the side of Nick's face] It's an emotional thirst, not a physical one. You wouldn't understand.
- Bugs: [to Nick as he is leaving] You, uh, find yourself a buddy - your own kind of buddy. A man alone has no damn chance, you hear?
- Dr. Henry Adams: I'd hate like hell to donate you to a war that doesn't even concern us. It's bad enough to die for your own country!
- Dr. Henry Adams: Well, Nick, what's a young man's reality is just an older man's dream. Old men dream dreams. Young men see visions.
- John: Ah, couldn't be worse! There's nothing worse than war!
- Italian Sergeant: Defeat is worse!
- John: I don't believe it! What is defeat? You go home!