- Joan Castleman: I can't do it anymore, Joe. I can't do it. I can't take it. I can't take the humiliation of holding your coat and arranging your pills and picking the crumbs out of your beard and being shoved aside with all the other wives to talk about some goddamn shopping trip while you, while you say to all the, the gathering sycophants that your wife doesn't write! Your wife, who just won the Nobel Prize!
- Joe Castleman: So, if I'm such an insensitive and talentless fucking piece of shit, why the fuck did you marry me?
- Elaine Mozell: Don't ever think that you can get their attention.
- Young Joan: Whose?
- Elaine Mozell: The men. Who write the reviews. Who run the publishing houses. Who edit the magazines. The ones who decide who gets to be taken seriously, who gets to be put up on a pedestal for the rest of their lives.
- Young Joan: A writer has to write.
- Elaine Mozell: A writer has to be read, honey.
- [last lines]
- Joan Castleman: [on the plane back] When we get home, I'm going to sit you and your sister down, and I'm going to tell you everything.
- David Castleman: Okay, Mom.