- Charles Moler: [cutting into Ann Marie's birthday cake] You know what? Not so long ago your daddy and I went to a birthday party in China.
- Ann Marie Brandt: In *China*?
- Charles Moler: [thinking about the pronunciation] Uh-huh. At a Mandarin's house. His name was Chou Ching Chang Chip Chop.
- Ann Marie Brandt: Did you have ice cream and cake?
- Charles Moler: Oooh, no, indeed. We had swallows' nests, umm, roasted silkworms, snake soup and, uh... cricket eggs!
- Ann Marie Brandt: Oh! You didn't eat *that*...?
- Charles Moler: Oh, we had to take a double helping of everything, or the Mandarin would've murdered us.
- Ann Marie Brandt: Oh, well, Uncle Charles, nobody will murder you here!
- Holger Brandt: Yes, champagne's what we need. A couple of glasses of champagne - and two strangers have a rich and happy past.
- Margit Brandt - His Wife: Please, you know how I'd love to come with you. But, darling, you must realize that our home is *my* responsibility. Just as concerts and practice are yours.
- Holger Brandt: Yes, I suppose you're right.
- Ann Marie Brandt: Isn't he stupid?
- Anita Hoffman: But he's a boy.
- Ann Marie Brandt: What's that to be so stuck up about?
- Margit Brandt - His Wife: That Spring you spoke of - that sort of happiness could only come once in one's life.
- Holger Brandt: There comes a night each year when one senses that Winter is suddenly over.
- Anita Hoffman: Yes, that Spring has come. Oh, how I look forward to it through the dreary months.
- Holger Brandt: Look, there goes the Winter now: broken, rushing to the sea. Don't you feel when Spring comes that the world is yours just for the asking? That there's nothing that you couldn't be?
- Anita Hoffman: Tonight, I would dare anything. Or, perhaps, it's only the champagne.
- Margit Brandt - His Wife: You know, I'd forgotten all this. The look one sees on these people's faces. Yet, it's scarcely any time at all since I sat in places like this - with just such boys and girls - remaking the world to suit ourselves. Just as they're doing now.
- Thomas Stenborg: You were going at it as if it were the climax of a tremendous symphony. You'll frighten my neighbors.
- Holger Brandt: Do you know what you remind me of?
- Anita Hoffman: No. Tell me.
- Holger Brandt: A Viennese waltz. Smiling but melancholy. A melody of the days when Vienna was a happy city.
- Margit Brandt - His Wife: I hope it won't be a long tour.
- Holger Brandt: But I've been home longer than I usually stay.
- Margit Brandt - His Wife: For that very reason - the days are going to seem so much emptier.
- Thomas Stenborg: You're waiting for me to say something very wise and helpful at this point. Well, I'll say to you what I've always said to myself when things seem too difficult: Courage, my friend. Courage.
- Margit Brandt - His Wife: We'll have some of those lovely, gay, irresponsible days. We'll be together in strange places as we used to be.
- Anita Hoffman: Holger, I'm going. I'm going now. Quickly, as if it didn't matter. Don't touch me - or say anything. Don't turn around.
- [she leaves, Holger turns around]
- Anita Hoffman: What am I? Your shadow. I don't exist without you.
- Holger Brandt: You're not a shadow. How can you talk such nonsense?
- Anita Hoffman: But it's enough. Let me be with you like this - always.
- Holger Brandt: And will that be enough? Always?
- Anita Hoffman: It has been the greatest happiness I've ever known - and the greatest I'll ever know. Such happiness couldn't come more than once in one's life. I know it couldn't. Could it?
- Holger Brandt: As time goes on, I suppose the memory of her will grow vague in my mind. But always in my heart will remain the image of her loveliness.
- Holger Brandt: We're all human, tragically human, and that we, all of us, make mistakes right up to the end of our lives.