- Joyce Arden: You're going to have love for breakfast, love for lunch and love for dinner. Sweet, sticky, sugary worship. You're going to live on a steady diet of it till you're ready to scream - you billy goat!
- Marcia West: [about Basil] I don't think there are words to describe him, do you?
- Joyce Arden: Well, there probably are, but one would have to have a very extensive vocabulary.
- Marcia West: [to Basil] Will you shut up?
- Basil Underwood: What?
- Marcia West: You meddlesome old nuisance, who asked you to interfere with our affairs, anyway?
- Henry Grant, Jr.: She's absolutely right!
- Basil Underwood: Well, I like that! Why, you - you...
- Marcia West: You leave Henry out of this! If he'd had any sense he would have realized that I'd have forgotten all about you in two weeks. I was in love with Clark Gable last year, and if I could get over him, it's a cinch I could get over you.
- Basil Underwood: Who's Clark Gable?
- Marcia West: [to Henry] He doesn't know who Clark Gable is.
- Henry Grant, Jr.: Hmmm. I do.
- Basil Underwood: Alright Joyce, I'm reaching for my gun.
- Joyce Arden: Wait, I believe the trigger's at the rear end.
- Marcia West: This is Miss Kane.
- Gracie Kane: I know you, you wear blue polka-dot shorts!
- Basil Underwood: Are there no reformatories in California?
- Joyce Arden: Oh, Madeleine. I don't understand how a man I'm so crazy about can take such a delight in tormenting me!
- Basil Underwood: Joyce, I'm a desperate man. If you don't open this door I'll kill myself.
- Joyce Arden: Good! Let's have blood and destruction!
- Gracie Kane: Oh, Mr. Actor Man! Where're you going?
- Basil Underwood: To someplace where there are no dear little children
- Gracie Kane: I know something you don't know, I know something you don't know.
- Basil Underwood: She knows something we don't know.
- Digges: It can't be very important or we'd know it.
- Joyce Arden: As you leave the theatre this evening, that distasteful blotch you will see to the left of the stage door will be all that remains of our ex-doorman! And I wish I could do the same for you, you billy-goat!
- Marcia West: What right has she to talk that way to me?
- Joyce Arden: Practically none. Wives have so few rights nowadays.
- Marcia West: Your wife?
- Basil Underwood: Yes, my wife...
- [looking at Joyce]
- Basil Underwood: ... wonderful.
- Basil Underwood: A strange situation. In order to make myself a better man, I've got to behave like a blaggard.
- Joyce Arden: I'm through, you hear me? I'm through.
- Basil Underwood: How modest of you to admit that, sweetheart.
- Joyce Arden: No, I mean with you.
- Marcia West: This Aunt Ella Paisley!
- Aunt Ella: [Grabbing his hand] Oh, Mr. Underwood! That hand! That Hand! That love line, and that mound of Venus. You'll be married once. Heaven help the poor girl, the lucky thing.
- Joyce Arden: After all, Washington did free the slaves.
- Basil Underwood: What's that got to do with it?
- Marcia West: I think that everyone should act the way they feel, don't you?
- Basil Underwood: Yes, uh, I do. Yes, yes.
- Marcia West: Of course, a lot of people think I'm crazy. Do you?
- Basil Underwood: No, no, no. A little strange, perhaps, but, uh...
- Marcia West: I thought perhaps, that... that someday when you're old and forgotten...
- Basil Underwood: What? Me... me forgotten?
- Marcia West: And when you feel that awful loneliness that comes to those who've been admired and then are now forgotten - that then, perhaps, you'll remember tonight. And be grateful to me.
- Joyce Arden: Are you ego maniac enough to think that I could be jealous of you? From head to foot, I'm one quivering mass of lonely. I shall never speak to you again.
- Basil Underwood: She doesn't love me anymore. I wonder why.
- Digges: Oh, women are changeable creatures, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Down in the street below, a great carnival of people... happy together. And up here, one man, miserably alone.
- Digges: I'm here, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Oh, you're always here, Digges.
- Digges: Yes, I thank you, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Digges, why is it no one loves me?
- Digges: But I love you, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Don't confuse the issue. Am I really such a bad fellow as she thinks?
- Digges: Oh, please, sir. Don't let's go into that now.
- Basil Underwood: There's loyalty for you.
- Digges: Yes sir, we get minus 200 for Philadelphia, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Philadelphia?
- Digges: The alderman's wife, sir.
- Basil Underwood: You can't count that. She didn't complain.
- Digges: Yes, but the alderman did, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Oh, all right. Have it your own way. Philadelphia, minus 20.
- Digges: Sorry, sir - Philadelphia, minus 200.
- Digges: All in all, I'm afraid we add up as a bit of bad odor, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Yes, I'm afraid we do. What a thing for a man to wake up and realize.
- Basil Underwood: Basil Underwood, you're a skunk.
- Digges: Oh, don't take it to heart, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Don't defend me, Digges. After all, what am I? Just the greatest actor in the world.
- Digges: Yes, but there's hope sir, even for us.
- Digges: Well, it's the season for making resolutions and turning over a new leaf, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Huh, I'd have to turn over the whole public library.
- Basil Underwood: Joyce, darling, please open the door. I'm going to show you a new side of me.
- Joyce Arden: I've seen every side of you and I'm not interested in any of this.
- Basil Underwood: Joyce!
- Joyce Arden: What?
- Basil Underwood: Sweetheart.
- Joyce Arden: Darling.
- Basil Underwood: Dearest darling.
- Joyce Arden: Sweetheart.
- Basil Underwood: I can't bear it. I forgive you.
- Joyce Arden: And I forgive you, too.
- Joyce Arden: Do you really love me so much?
- Basil Underwood: With all my heart and my soul. You're all women in one and the one woman.
- Joyce Arden: I know that's from the first act of... but darling, darling. Say it again.
- Basil Underwood: No, you say something nice to me.
- Joyce Arden: Dearest, I think you're the lowest thing that ever crawled, but as long as I can reach out and get my hands on you, no other man will ever touch me.
- Basil Underwood: Thank you. Thank you.
- Basil Underwood: You hear that, Digges? We're going to be married.
- Digges: What, again, sir?
- Basil Underwood: What do you mean, again? We've never been married before... have we sweet?
- Digges: I mean planning again, sir. At least a dozen times this past year.
- Basil Underwood: I resent the implication, Digges, as if we don't know our own minds.
- Digges: It's just that you've approached the precipice so often, sir.
- Joyce Arden: I resent that precipice, Digges.
- Henry Grant, Jr.: Haven't you one speck of unselfishness in you?
- Basil Underwood: What was that?
- Henry Grant, Jr.: Don't you ever do a thing because it's the decent thing to do?
- Basil Underwood: The decent thing to do? I'm beginning to see something.
- Henry Grant, Jr.: Don't you ever do a thing that's generous if only to help your self-respect?
- Digges: Oh, sir. I have the gravest misgivings about all this, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Nonsense, Digges. It's a golden opportunity. It'll be my moral salvation. I want 500 points for this Digges.
- Digges: Oh, when I think of poor Miss Joyce in there unexpectingly
- [sic]
- Digges: getting ready, sir.
- Basil Underwood: Well, she'll love me for it.
- Digges: I hope you can make her see it in that light, sir.
- Digges: Couldn't you marry her first, sir, and demonstrate your reformation afterwards?
- Basil Underwood: No, Digges. I'm determined to come to her a cleansed man. I will not have the woman I love married to what you somewhat indelicately refer to as a bad odor.
- Digges: Are we going to tell her, sir?
- Basil Underwood: Well, the arrangement might be a little difficult to understand from the female point of view.
- Digges: Exactly, sir.
- Basil Underwood: I think in that case, I will spring it as a happy surprise.
- Joyce Arden: Basil, are you standing me up again?
- Basil Underwood: Now, now, don't get excited. You know what it does to you.
- Joyce Arden: You thing. You unutterable...
- Basil Underwood: Joyce, remember your glands.
- Joyce Arden: If I hadn't been hypnotized, I'd have known you'd do this to me again.
- Basil Underwood: You see, I, I, I've gotta go do a favor for a friend.