- Frieda Winter: Don't tell me it's because you're jealous of my new beau.
- Youngblood Hawke: It was obvious you preferred his company.
- Frieda Winter: [smiles] Come, come, come now. We had the loveliest farewell. Remember?
- Youngblood Hawke: You like him?
- Frieda Winter: Well, he's young and he needs help. He talks big and brave, but he's stumbling and very scared. He can't get his new book started and he's afraid of being a one book sensation. Frankly, he makes me feel kind of motherly. Something you never did.
- Quentin Judd: I am going to drink a toast to "Arms for Oblivion" and the start of an important career. Oh, thank God your book isn't another one of those marshmallows about sex, high society, or another one of those bleats about the problems of adolescence. Or, life among the military - suitably adorned, as in the new Howard Fain book with four-letter filth. I'm going to say a few sharp things about your - overwriting and your coincidences and your plotting. But, all in all, I'm for you. Ladies and gentlemen, may the stag outrun the hounds!
- Frieda Winter: [to Youngblood, after a big-wig literary critic cracks a cruel joke] Tsk-tsk-tsk. You're supposed to laugh at Quentin's jokes. He can make you or - break you. Shall we exit laughing?
- Frieda Winter: I'm sick, you don't know how sick I am. Of you, your mother, your accusations, and the whole damn thing!
- Youngblood Hawke: I thought you swore off those things?
- Jeanne Green: [smoking] I did. I have no character. Besides, I like to cough.
- Frieda Winter: [speaking to Youngblood Hawke] Young men generally find out about love after it has slipped through their fingers. When they are *very* lucky, they get a second chance. But that doesn't happen enough to make this one big, ecstatically happy world... does it?
- Jason Prince: Youngblood, we're closing up early today to avoid the annual regrets brought on by the office Christmas party. Last year's ended up with one known pregnancy and two divorces.
- Jason Prince: That's quite an explosion of talent - full of enormous energy. A real dinosaur of a book.
- Sarah Hawke: For once, your rich uncles have got too big for their breeches, you'll see. They can't tread on me.
- Jeanne Green: [in Brooklyn, looking across the East River to Manhattan] I live here to get away from the rat race - so I can breathe deep, hear the fog horns, work on manuscripts. Besides, it reminds me of my home, San Francisco.
- Jeanne Green: [to Youngblood] I'm between beaus at the moment, so there's nothing that would interfere with anything. Say, don't you want to take at look at your brave new world? Think you can lick it?
- Fannie Prince: How does a man as young as you know so much about life? I read your book and I was taller and greener. I was younger. I was sadder. I was happier. How did you do this miracle? Oh, darling...
- Youngblood Hawke: I'm half way through my second novel, "Chain of Command," and, well, the words - they just *pourin'* outta me, they're pourin' out. And, it's my best work, so far. I know that. It's my best work! You see, I had to waste so much time drivin' those coal trucks all day, so I could write all night.
- Jason Prince: I figure the market can use a real backwoods savage type genius about now.
- Frieda Winter: Savage?
- Youngblood Hawke: At least it's economical gettin' an early reputation as a slob, isn't it?
- Jeanne Green: Don't be silly. It's a rite of genius to be non-conformist.
- Quentin Judd: I don't know why people take critics so seriously. One good creator is worth all the critics who have ever lived.
- Quentin Judd: It occurs to me that it isn't often these days we're invited to a running of the stag. Hey, Frieda? That's an ancient custom. You see, the stag had to be a prime young male, full of fight, worthy of the chase, to be harried to death by the rich hunters, each of whom had his private reasons for chasing the strong male thing to death. Oh, the ladies loved it too. After the hounds had chased him down, the gamekeeper would pull his head back and offer a sharp knife to the loveliest lady there and she would cut his throat. And that, my friend, was the end of the stag.
- Frieda Winter: I understand you are a night worker, aren't you?
- Youngblood Hawke: Yes, I do my best work then.
- [Frieda bursts out laughing]
- Frieda Winter: There's nothing I'd rather do than stay with you. You know that. But, I think it's better when we never meet each other again. Don't you?
- Youngblood Hawke: It was all my fault. I'm so sorry...
- Frieda Winter: Never - never apologize.
- Frieda Winter: Now, if you want to welcome a lady caller on occasion, when she's through at her work, you may do so - and you won't have to brush wet laundry aside in order to take her - to kiss her.
- Youngblood Hawke: What puzzles me is that a girl like you is still at large. I thought you'd been speared at 16.
- Youngblood Hawke: I want to tell you, you've really lightened a heavy heart.
- Jeanne Green: Oh? I thought that was Mrs. Winter's job, not mine?
- Ross Hodge: I'd like to create a new office department at our firm - with you heading it. 300 a week to start to see if you like us. We know we like you.
- Jeanne Green: We? The whole office likes me?
- Ross Hodge: The editorial we. Me.
- Ross Hodge: Being with you makes me feel good. It's funny. Some people improve life by simply existing.
- Jeanne Green: Don't get up Ross. Where I work a gentlemen doesn't rise when a lady enters the room. It's a lost art. Gentlemen and the prairie dog, a vanishing animal.
- Jeanne Green: You don't need me. You never have. My emotions are becoming a little too obvious. I - I can't continue to work so closely with you. Certainly not night after night.
- Sarah Hawke: [introduced to Jeanne] You're the one my son wrote me about. You seem too pretty to have so much brains.
- Frieda Winter: You will need me to keep people away from you - when you want to work. And to be available - when you want to play.
- Frieda Winter: You please me. You make me happy. And that's why I want to go to Nassau with you. To have you - with me. Days and nights. Days and nights.
- Frieda Winter: Oh, darling, I can think of a million reasons to escape New York. Oh, it's the greatest city on earth, still, the sameness gets you. Its always the same faces, the same restaurants, and the same theaters and the same waiters...
- Frieda Winter: When I'm with you, everything becomes new again - and sharp and good and food tastes better and colors seem more intense.