- Edie Johnson: It's none of your business what I do. It's a respectable job and I pay my own way.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: And you are not living in Beaver Canal anymore?
- Edie Johnson: Yeah I've come up in the world. I used to live in a sewer and now I live in a swamp. All those babes do it in the movies. By now I ought to be married to the governor and paying blackmail so he don't find out I once lived in Beaver Canal.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: We wanted to examine your ex-husband's body. To make sure he died from the causes we think he did. We're not permitted to without permission of the family.
- Edie Johnson: Well, what about Johnny's brothers?
- Dr. Dan Wharton: They won't allow it.
- Edie Johnson: For cash they will.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: I'm afraid not.
- Edie Johnson: For two bits they'd sell his eyeballs.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: You're fond of them, I can see that.
- Edie Johnson: They're lovable.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: How well do you know Ray Biddle?
- Edie Johnson: Well enough, why?
- Dr. Dan Wharton: You seemed concerned about him.
- Edie Johnson: Because I asked how he was? You ask that about a sick alley cat.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: My point is you got out.
- Edie Johnson: Five blocks away.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: Five million blocks, what's the difference? You hate Beaver Canal; you hate what it stands for.
- Edie Johnson: You talk like I was a poet or a professor. I found open a manhole and I crawled out of a sewer, wouldn't anybody?
- Dr. Dan Wharton: Ray Biddle wouldn't. He likes Beaver Canal; he likes what it stands for.
- Edie Johnson: I don't even know what that means: "stands for"? There's no difference in people except the size of their tips. A drunk is a drunk and a pass is a pass if it comes from a Cadillac or a foreigner.
- Dr. Luther Brooks: Lefty! But don't you see this way you are no better than they are?
- Lefty Jones: Ain't that asking a lot for us to be better than them when we get killed just trying to prove we're as good.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: We want you to know how sorry we are Mrs. Biddle, we realize this is no time...
- Edie Johnson: The name's Johnson. Edie Johnson
- Dr. Dan Wharton: Since when?
- Edie Johnson: Since I divorced Johnnie Biddle a year and a half ago. So it's nice of you to drop around and tell me you're sorry. Only I'm not interested. And I'll tell you something else. If you came by here to say the whole Biddle family was dying and this cigarette bud was the only thing that could save them.
- [without emotion throws the cigarette bud out the window]
- Dr. Luther Brooks: There is a possiblity that I killed him. Isn't there?
- Dr. Dan Wharton: Don't be a fool
- Dr. Luther Brooks: That I was careless in the spinal tap. That his brother's Negro-bating got me down.
- Dr. Dan Wharton: I don't want to ever here you say anything like that again... Your'e are a capable doctor. You were the doctor in charge. You did what you thought right and there's an end to it.