- Bud Reeves: Oh, I don't think you got to really know New York.
- Station Agent: I wonder. I wonder if I didn't. I was a telegraph operator and a process server. I was a part-time life guard at Rockaway Beach. I worked on the BMT and drove a taxi. I was a rubber in a Turkish bath. Had a job on the day shift in the Hymnbook factory and on the night shift in the bowery flop house---a job they handed to let me to work out my rent. I drew wages in a hash house and a 'chink' laundry and a pet shop. For a week I sorted stiffs in the morgue and for a month worked on a coal barge. I delivered gin for a drug store in Astoria and had my own ice business in the Bronx. I met tramps and bootleggers and bishops and reporters and gun men and borough presidents and you, you come-a tellin' me I didn't get to know New York.
- Station Agent: [Handing Bud the train ticket to New York] Here you are, sonny. $46 and you're in Manhattan. Forty six dollars... Ha, that's 22 dollars more than the Dutch East India Company paid the Indians for the whole fool island. A long and skinny bed of rock that you couldn't buy today for a million million.
- Shep Adkins: [looking at a newspaper article] Nope. The old town ain't what it used to be. Looky here, now: cops grab a fella for a stickup. He's got two guns and a butcher knife in one pocket, and a powder-puff and a lipstick in the other.
- Vida Fleet: Double 4; 5 and a 3; 6 and a 2; 8 for the lady from upstate, dice. Here we go! Ha!
- Vida Fleet: Come on you babies, here we go again. Rattle-n-roll. A little natural and we take the dough. 11 or a 7; 7 or 11. I ain't particular. Ha!
- Station Agent: Say, I guess you're willing to stay around home now awhile, heh? Got enough of New York for good and all. That right?
- Bud Reeves: Well, certainly not!
- Station Agent: What's that? You mean you'd like to go back to that place?
- Bud Reeves: Of course I would! And I'm goin'. It may not be right soon, but, I'll go back. I know I will. New York's alright. It was just me that was wrong. It's a place that sorta takes hold of you. Gets under your skin. Licked me this time. Licked me bad. But, next time, maybe, well, it might be different.
- Female guest at Bud's hotel party: You weren't ever in Caracas, were you?
- Mr. 'Stacky' Stackhouse: I spent six months in South America, the land of the Latin.
- Female guest at Bud's hotel party: [rather vapidly] Really?
- Mr. 'Stacky' Stackhouse: I traversed that vast continent from Caracas to the Cape. I saw volcanoes, jaguars and wild, wild Indians.
- Female guest at Bud's hotel party: [rather vapidly] You did?
- Mr. 'Stacky' Stackhouse: I was in Paraguay, Uruguay and the magnificent Argentine. I spent six weeks in the Brazilian jungle. I swam in the great Orinoco. I hunted along the banks of the Rio de la Plata. And at the headwaters of the Amazon I ate wild berries and monkey meat.
- Female guest at Bud's hotel party: [rather vapidly] You did?
- Vida Fleet: Never mind those 9s or 12s or 7s. Just give me that 8, dice. Here we go. Roll em' hard. Turn em' over. Butter side up. Ha!
- Vida Fleet: Number 4. Little virgin 4. That's it, dice. Keep 'em low; keep 'em small. Baby face numbers. Just a 4, 4, 4, 4. Just 4, and I die happy. Ha! 7! Oh, I've lost your money.
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