- Cassandra: This truth stands firm... the wise will fly from war, but if war comes, to die well is to win the victor's crown.
- Cassandra: [to Hecuba] I know that I am mad, but mother dearest, now, for this one time, I do not rave.
- Talthybius: [to Hecuba about the ordered death of Astyanax] A herald who must bring such orders should be a man who feels no pity and no shame either... not like me.
- [last lines]
- Hecuba: Trembling body... old weak limbs... you must carry me on to the new day of slavery.
- Hecuba: I think those that are gone care little how they are buried. It is we, the living, our vanity.
- Talthybius: [rides up and dismounts; he walks slowly forward and stops some distance from Andromache] Wife of the noblest man that was in Troy... O wife of Hector, do not hate me. Against my will I come to tell you...
- [Andromache looks at him; he continues haltingly]
- Talthybius: The people and the kings have all resolved -...
- Andromache: What is it? Evil follows words like those.
- Talthybius: This child they order - -
- [he can't finish the phrase - he looks away, then through clenched teeth]
- Talthybius: Oh, how can I say it...
- Andromache: [presses her son against her] Not that he does not go with me to the same master -...
- Talthybius: No man in Greece shall ever be his master.
- Andromache: [stares at Talthybius, perplexed] But - - leave him here - - all that is left of Troy?
- Talthybius: I don't know how to tell you. What is bad words can't make better -...
- Andromache: [hoping against hope] I feel you kind. But you have not good news.
- Talthybius: [long pause, then he screams out] Your child must die! There, now you know the whole, bad as it is!
- Andromache: [silence. Then slowly, as if from the marrow of her bones, the scream comes - - wild, scaringly, rising from the dark roots of sound beyond words]
- Andromache: [to Hecuba] Your dead Polyxena you weep for? What does she know of pain like mine? The living must have hope. Not I, not any more.
- Soldier 4: [talking about Helen] No matter what they said, Helen will get back home alive.
- Soldier 5: And she knows it.
- Soldier 4: They need her for the victory parade. A symbol of Greek strength.
- Soldier 5: A bloody trophy.
- Soldier 4: Who needs her for a trophy? There's all that gold.
- Soldier 5: [ironically] The Greeks don't go to war for gold. They find a cause. That's what Helen is - a cause!
- Andromache: [on learning of Astyanax's fate] O Greeks, you have found ways to torture that are not Greek!
- Talthybius: [he's told Hecuba that Cassandra is to be Agamemnon's prize and concubine] A king's bed is not so bad.