- Alfie Byrne: Dancing is neither modest or immodest. It's either well-done, or badly done.
- Christy Ward: Is that a quote?
- Alfie Byrne: Almost.
- Ivor Carney: It's very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only stock brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
- Robbie Fay: Don't you be dirtying that nice clean bus, now.
- Alfie Byrne: You have it lovely, Bosie. I can see myself in it, like Narcissus.
- Robbie Fay: You're at it again.
- Alfie Byrne: At what?
- Robbie Fay: That stuff you do. Big words. Poetry.
- Ivor Carney: Now, what I was saying... We should attempt to keep him out of harm's way.
- Lily Byrne: You don't mean St James' Hospital or...?
- Ivor Carney: Oh no, no. I didn't mean to have him committed. Though that's a fairly good idea.
- Alfie Byrne: Ah, Wardie. My best friend, my choice friend!
- Christy Ward: That's the spirit, Mr Byrne. Now don't let the bastards grind you down.
- Alfie Byrne: A commendable sentiment, if a little coarse in the phrasin'.
- Ivor Carney: She's not suitable at all. Mutton dressed as lamb!
- Mrs Taaffe: She's a bit young to be mutton.
- Ivor Carney: I don't know what the world is coming to, but I know what you're coming to, Alfred Byrne. A bad end. A sad, bad end!
- Robbie Fay: [to Alfie Byrne] I know where you been. I don't care what ya get up to. I like ya. You're me pal. And I know who Bosie was and all.
- Ivor Carney: Ah, Ward! You're a sodality member.
- Christy Ward: Was.
- Ivor Carney: How can you allow yourself to be directed by this man?
- Christy Ward: And why shouldn't I?
- Ivor Carney: He is a great sinner!
- Christy Ward: He's a terrible *director*, but *I'm* staying.
- Alfie Byrne: She is like a dove that has strayed. She is like a Narcissus trembling in the wind. She is like a silver flower.
- Robbie Fay: You know what I think?
- Alfie Byrne: What, Bosie?
- Robbie Fay: I think you're soft on her.
- Christy Ward: You see, it was a Friday the thirteenth. I remember warning you about that at the time. Friday the thirteenth... It's an old theatrical tradition, like Hamlet.
- Alfie Byrne: What are you talking about, Ward?
- Christy Ward: They never go up on a Friday the thirteenth. And they never say Hamlet. Never.
- Alfie Byrne: Macbeth they never say.
- Alfie Byrne: They made him from nothin', raised him to the stars. The first promotion he gets...
- Christy Ward: Off the bus and into a new motor car.