Constance Cummings credited as playing...
Ruth Condomine
- Violet Bradman: Can you foretell the future?
- Madame Arcati: Certainly not. I disapprove of fortune-tellers most strongly.
- Violet Bradman: Oh, really - why?
- Madame Arcati: Too much guesswork and fake mixed up with it - even when the gift is genuine - and it only very occasionally is - you can't count on it.
- Ruth Condomine: Why not?
- Madame Arcati: Time again. Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked.
- Ruth Condomine: You mean because it has never yet been proved that the past and the present and the future are not one and the same thing?
- Madame Arcati: I long ago came to the conclusion that nothing has ever been definitely proved about anything.
- Charles Condomine: I haven't forgotten Elvira. I remember her very distinctly, in deed. I remember how fascinating she was and how maddening. I remember how her gay charm when she'd achieved her own way over something and her extreme acidity when she didn't. I remember her physical attractiveness, which was tremendous, and her spiritual integrity which was nil.
- Ruth Condomine: Was she more physically attractive than I am?
- Charles Condomine: That's a very tiresome question, darling. It fully deserves a wrong answer.
- Ruth Condomine: You called us back and you've done nothing but try to get rid of us ever since we came. Hasn't he, Elvira?
- Elvira Condomine: He certainly has.
- Ruth Condomine: Now, owing to your idiotic inefficiency, we find ourselves in this mortifying position. We're neither fish, flesh fowl, nor - whatever it is.
- Charles Condomine, Elvira Condomine: Good red herring.
- Ruth Condomine: [to Charles] Now I want you to come upstairs with me and go to bed.
- Elvira Condomine: The way that woman harps on bed.
- Ruth Condomine: Edith, you know the cocktail shaker?
- Edith: Yes 'em.
- Ruth Condomine: Well, I want you to fill two of those long stem glasses from it and bring them up here.
- Edith: Yes 'em.
- Ruth Condomine: And Edith, as you're not in the Navy, its unnecessary to do everything on the double.
- Edith: Very good, ma'am.
- Ruth Condomine: And Edith, when you're serving dinner, try to remember to do it calmly, methodically.
- Edith: Yes 'em.
- Ruth Condomine: Now, go and get the cocktails.
- Charles Condomine: Drunk?
- Ruth Condomine: You had two strong dry martinis before dinner. A great deal too much burgundy at dinner. Heaven knows how much port and kimmel with Dr. Bradman while I was doing my best to entertain that mad woman. And two large brandies later. I gave them to you myself. Of course you were drunk.
- Ruth Condomine: Alcohol will ruin your whole life if you allow it to get ahold on you, you know.
- Charles Condomine: Once and for all, Ruth, I'd like you to understand that what happened last night was nothing whatever to do with alcohol! I grant you it may have been some form of psychic delusion, but I was stone cold sober from first to last.
- Ruth Condomine: Madame Arcati, I'm profoundly disturbed and I want your help.
- Madame Arcati: Splendid! I thought as much. Fire away.
- Madame Arcati: You say she's visible only to your husband?
- Ruth Condomine: Yes.
- Madame Arcati: Visible only to husband. Audible too, I presume?
- Ruth Condomine: Extremely audible.
- Charles Condomine: What do you suppose induced Agnes to leave us?
- Ruth Condomine: The reason was becoming increasingly obvious, dear.
- Charles Condomine: Yes. We must keep Edith in the house more.
- Madame Arcati: Some mediums prefer Indians, of course. But, personally I've always found them unreliable.
- Ruth Condomine: In what way, unreliable?
- Madame Arcati: Well, to start with, they're frightfully lazy. Also, when faced with any sort of difficulty, they're apt to go off into their own tribal language - which is naturally unintelligible. That generally spoils everything and wastes a good deal of time.
- Madame Arcati: We might contact a poltergeist - which would be extremely destructive and noisy.
- Ruth Condomine: In what way destructive?
- Madame Arcati: They throw things, you know.
- Ruth Condomine: No. I didn't know.
- Ruth Condomine: I gather you got some sort of plan behind all this? I'm not quite a fool.
- Charles Condomine: Ruth, Elvira is here! She's standing a few yards away from you!
- Ruth Condomine: Yes, dear, I can see her distinctly - under the piano with a zebra!
- Charles Condomine: But, Ruth...
- Ruth Condomine: I'm not going to stay here arguing any longer.
- Charles Condomine: But, listen, Ruth, please...
- Ruth Condomine: I will not listen to any more of this nonsense. I'm going upstairs to bed now. I shall leave you to turn off the lights. I won't be asleep. I'm much too upset. So, you can come in and say good night to me. If you feel like it.
- Charles Condomine: Its extraordinary about daylight, isn't it?
- Ruth Condomine: How do you mean?
- Charles Condomine: Oh, it introduces everything to normal.
- Ruth Condomine: Now look here, Charles, this display of roguish flippancy might have been alluring. In a middle-aged novelist it's nauseating.
- Charles Condomine: I don't see what I've done that's so awful?
- Ruth Condomine: You behaved abominably last night. You wounded me and insulted me.
- Charles Condomine: I was a victim of an aberration.
- Ruth Condomine: Nonsense. You were drunk.