- Finlay: Hating is always the same, always senseless. One day it kills Irish Catholics, the next day Jews, the next day Protestants, the next day Quakers. It's hard to stop. It can end up killing men who wear striped neckties. Or people from Tennessee.
- Finlay: This business of hating Jews comes in a lot of different sizes. There's the "you can't join our country club" kind and "you can't live around here" kind. Yes, and the "you can't work here" kind. And because we stand for all of these, we get Monty's kind. He's just one guy, we don't get him very often, but he grows out of all the rest.
- Montgomery: Of course, I've seen a lot of guys like him.
- Finlay: Like what?
- Montgomery: Oh, you know, guys that played it safe during the war, scrounged around, keepin' themselves in civvies, got swell apartments, swell dames... you know the kind.
- Finlay: I'm not sure that I do. Just what kind?
- Montgomery: Oh, you know... some of them are named Samuels. Some of them got funnier names.
- Finlay: [with stone-faced expression] You'll be at the Stewart Hotel?
- Montgomery: Sure, I got nowhere else to go. I'm sponging a bunk from one of the boys. You coming Keeley?
- Finlay: There are one or two more questions I'd like to ask Sergeant Keeley.
- [Montgomery leaves]
- Keeley: He ought to look at a casualty list sometime. There are a lot of funny names there, too.
- Finlay: The motive had to be inside the killer himself. Something he brought with him. Something he'd been nursing, for a long time. Something that had been waiting. The killer had to be someone who could hate Samuels without knowing him. Who could hate him enough to kill him, under the right circumstances, not for any real reason but, mistakenly and ignorantly.
- Ginny: [to Mitchell's wife] Okay, where were you when he needed you? Maybe you were someplace having beautiful thoughts. Well, I wasn't. I was in a stinkin' gin mill, where all he had to do to see me was walk in, sit down at the table, and buy me a drink.
- The Man: [preparing coffee on the stove] Want some coffee?
- Mitchell: Sure.
- The Man: I'm her husband. I'm Ginny's husband. I was a soldier. I conked out.
- [points to his heart]
- The Man: You're wondering about this setup, aren't you?
- Mitchell: Yeah, I guess I am.
- The Man: [walks over to Montgomery] Well, ask her, then. She was a tramp when I married her. I didn't know it at first, but I knew it before we were married. That's one of the reasons I enlisted - to get away from her. But I couldn't wait to get out and come back to her. When I did, she didn't want me. Funny, isn't it? But I still want her. I still love her.
- [pauses to check the coffee]
- The Man: You know what I just told you? That's a lie.
- Mitchell: I see.
- The Man: I'm not her husband. I met her the same as you did, at the joint. Can't keep away from her. I want to marry her, and she won't have me.
- Mitchell: I see.
- The Man: You believe that? Well, that's a lie, too. I don't love her, and I don't want to marry her. She makes good money there. You got any money on ya?
- Mitchell: No.
- The Man: She makes good money sometimes. Hey, you suppose I could be a soldier? Maybe I could in the regular army. Make a good rating and make some dough by the next war?
- Mitchell: Why not?
- The Man: Why not? Because I don't want to. What do I wanna be a soldier for? I'm too restless. I don't know what I wanna do. You gonna wait for her?
- Mitchell: I don't know.
- The Man: Well, wait for her if you want to. Soon as we've had some coffee, I'm gonna take a nap. Got any cigarettes?
- Mitchell: No.
- Finlay: Ignorant men always laugh at things that are different - things they don't understand. They're afraid of things they don't understand. They end up hating them.
- Finlay: [Telling a story of the past] When he left the bar, two men followed him with empty whisky bottles. They didn't mean to kill him. They were just going to rough him up a little. They didn't start out to kill, they just started out hating. The way Monty started out. But 20 minutes later, my grandfather was dead. That's history, Leroy. They don't teach it in school, but it's real American history just the same. Thomas Finlay was killed in 1848 just because he was an Irishman and a Catholic. It happened many times. Maybe that's hard for you to believe, Leroy, but it's true. And last night, Joseph Samuels was killed just because he was a Jew.
- Keeley: [to Finlay, about Mitchell] He's homesick. He's wifesick. Maybe she said something in one of her letters that made him suspicious of her love life. I don't know. Anyway, he's got snakes. He's been nuts. But not nuts enough to kill somebody.