- Uncle Bill: I'll tell you the only right approach to real writing. It's like a hunt. It's a hunt in which a man pits his brains against the forces of ignorance and evil. It's a lifelong and lonely safari. The prey he seeks is a truth worth telling - a faith worth living by - something worth spilling his guts about. He must track it down by himself. I don't know if you'll be one to have the fortitude to stick it, to follow the spoor no matter where it leads, to what pain and suffering, through hell and high water. If you are, God help you. God pity you. And good luck.
- Countess Liz: You are everywhere, aren't you, darling?
- Uncle Bill: It's the only attribute I share with the Almighty.
- Harry Street: Countess, there's no one like you. Climb up here on this boat.
- Countess Liz: I can't , Harry! I've hardly anything on.
- Harry Street: Get up here.
- Countess Liz: Please, lover. Not out here.
- Cynthia Green: it's funny. When you touch me, I still turn giddy. I could be dying, and if you touch me, I turn giddy.
- Harry Street: It may be the dawning of suspicion, but, the fact that the airplane is faster than the horse, does not necessarily prove that the world is getting any better.
- Dr. Simmons: [referring to Cynthia's miscarriage] Do you actually mean you didn't know about the child? Don't you people talk to each other?
- Harry Street: Oh, the royalties are rolling in. That's one thing about success - even when it's a failure. It snowballs for a while. There's also one thing about a snowball - it has nowhere to go but downhill.
- Harry Street: Let's not kid ourselves. A door can open suddenly into nothing and death has been standing there all the while.
- Princess: Oh, I just devoured your last book!
- Harry Street: [sarcastically] Well, I hope it didn't give you a bellyache!
- Cynthia Green: Why didn't you ask me to go with you?
- Harry Street: Darling, there's a war going on there.
- Cynthia Green: There's a war goung on here too right at this table! There's a dandy little war going on!
- Cynthia Green: What is the matter with me, Mr. Johnson?
- Johnson: Everybody isn't required to like Africa, you know.
- Cynthia Green: I try to put on a show because I know he loves it so. But all of it - the hunting, the killing - terrifies me.
- Johnson: See here, this thing that he was talking about - the excitement - call it courage. The way he feels, it is a man's feeling, natural in a man, grows in a man, and makes him a man. Not particularly to his credit if he has it but something lacking if he hasn't. A woman shows her courage in other ways, - many ways.
- Helen: Hello, Molo, you white man's burden, you!
- Molo, African Servant: [talks in an African language]
- Helen: Darling, we only got the first aid book.
- Harry Street: [looking at the witch doctor] What's he going to do, sprinkle me with monkey dust?
- Helen: Darling!
- Harry Street: A hair from the tail of a leopard?
- Johnson: Why is it everyone who comes to Africa has to write a book about it? One silly beggar even dedicated his to me! Never came back or I'd have shot him in the pants!
- Harry Street: [narrating] I suppose it was the elusiveness of Liz which was her main attraction. She was something to hunt down and trap and capture. The Countess Elizabeth - Frigid Liz - the semi-iceerg from the semi-tropics!
- Harry Street: [scoffs] Doctors? It was a wise man who said that if all the medicines were dumped into the sea, it would be a horrible day for the fishes?
- [chuckles]
- Harry Street: [talking about their African trip] There's a wonderful book in it. Maybe I'll write it some day.
- Cynthia Green: Darling!
- Harry Street: Don't spoil it! Don't talk it all away!
- Harry Street: I had it all... and what did I have? My name in the papers, my face in the better magazines... and where was Cynthia?
- Harry Street: It's not dying, not in itself, that matters! It's dying of failure. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth. How does a man miss the boat?
- Harry Street: Molo.
- Molo, African Servant: Bwana?
- Harry Street: Go away or stuff your ears so you won't hear the civilized people fighting.
- Harry Street: Whiskey soda. Make it pronto, Molo.
- Helen: It's bad for you.
- Harry Street: No, it isn't . It's good for me.
- Helen: It's not good for you!
- Harry Street: No. "It's Bad for Me". Cole Porter wrote the words and music.
- [sings]
- Harry Street: The knowledge that you're going mad for me.
- [talks]
- Harry Street: There, that's poetry. Oh, I'm full of poetry now. *Rot* and poetry.
- Helen: Harry.
- Harry Street: Rotten poetry!
- Harry Street: That's a pretty good rule for life: Take everything you can, if only to keep it from somebody else. Wish I'd followed it.
- Helen: You insisted on carrying the boy in your arms all the way back to camp. And it was from all his blood and dirt that you got that infection.
- Harry Street: That could be the point of view. From yours, it would be contact with the lower classes. Being a writer, I prefer to think that it was a quirk of fate, a mere prick of a thorn, that laid the great man low.
- Harry at Seventeen: He only said we ought to wait.
- Connie: Ha! Wait? I like that, coming from you!
- Harry at Seventeen: I didn't say...
- Connie: You bet you didn't! Not once all summer when you wanted to hug and kiss me and get fresh. And all those things about where you'd take me and what we'd do. Not once did you yell to me to wait!
- Helen: Harry! Why do you have to turn into a devil?
- Harry Street: Because if I can't die happy, I can try to die delirious.
- Harry Street: Oh, I've lived, all right; but, where has it got me? To a camp in Africa with you: my rich, beautiful wife. Before you, how many others? That's traveling alone - in a pig's eye.
- Harry Street: Everybody's trying something over here. Or at least trying to try. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to paint?
- Cynthia Green: No, I'm not trying to paint.
- Harry Street: Are you trying to sculpt?
- Cynthia Green: No, I'm not trying to sculpt.
- Harry Street: Well, then you must be trying to write too.
- Cynthia Green: No. I'm only trying to be happy.
- Harry Street: Well, everybody's trying something.
- Harry Street: You know, in Paris, nobody ever thinks of suggesting just going home - to rest.
- Cynthia Green: May I have a cigarette?
- [Harry gives Cynthia a cigarette, takes one for himself, lights both at the same time with one match, as the both stare into each others eyes]
- Harry Street: I'm remembering my manners. Are you - Compton's lady?
- Cynthia Green: No. I'm not particularly Compton's lady. I'm not Compton's lady at all. I'm my own lady.
- Cynthia Green: I'm not completely idle. I - I pose sometimes.
- Harry Street: In what my maiden aunt calls "the altogether" ?
- Cynthia Green: Sometimes.
- Harry Street: Well, we all have to make our way with whatever we were given.
- Harry Street: Could you - conceivably picture yourself as Harry's lady?
- Cynthia Green: Will you be kind to me? I think I'm a little afraid of you.
- Cynthia Green: Can I fix you a drink?
- Harry Street: It's a little bit early, isn't it?
- Cynthia Green: It seems to me to be just about the right time. Do you object?
- Johnson: See here, I'm just a hunter. I can only say it the way I know how. It's when you run away, you're most liable to stumble.
- Cynthia Green: I'm going to have a baby.
- Johnson: What?
- Cynthia Green: We came to Africa for trophies. Harry's got his, and I've got mine.
- Harry Street: [voiceover] There are so many things that I've not written - and that I'll never write now. I've written only that first time in Paris - the Paris that I loved. The Place Contrescarpe - where the flower sellers dyed their flowers in the street. The dye ran purple over the paving stones where the autobus started. And the children played in the streets in the spring sunshine. And the wood and coal man's place. He sold wine too. Bad wine. And the golden horse's head outside the Boucherie Chevaline - where the carcasses hung yellow, gold and red in the window. And the green-painted cooperative where we bought our wine. Good wine and cheap.
- Harry Street: Darling, you shouldn't drink too much.
- Cynthia Green: No, no. I shouldn't do a lot of things too much. I shouldn't love you too much. I'm awfully bad for you. We're so hopelessly in love, and we can't make it work.
- Harry Street: You Africans may have the right system with women at that. Buy one for a few cows, whatever it is you happen to use for money. And if she isn't satisfactory, you get your money back. We use our emotions. And if it cracks up, we don't get anything back.