- Laura Pennington: It isn't as if I weren't aware of my ugliness. There's only one thing you've overlooked. Women like me, conscious as we may be of our defects, we find a refuge in our dreams, daydreams as well as night dreams; merciful dreams in which we're as lovely and desirable as the loveliest and most desirable woman in the world. It's cruel to destroy those dreams.
- Oliver Bradford: Well, apparently you don't complain!
- Major John Hillgrove: You haven't given me a chance.
- Mrs. Abigail Minnett: There's some that are meant to be wanderers. Others, it's no good for them to go looking for things.
- Major John Hillgrove: You've got to have faith in yourself. You're a person, you're not just a case; you're a complete individual, remember that. You're like a man who's come across a place in the road where it branches off into many little side paths; you don't want to go ahead, you want to go back. You're confused. You don't trust yourself.
- Oliver Bradford: Why should I? How can I trust myself?
- Major John Hillgrove: You must.
- Mrs. Abigail Minnett: It's not for some of us, for you and for me, to try to live like other people. You think you can sometimes, but there's always the world to remind you. All the things that other people take for granted, you've got to make up your mind and your heart, they're not for you. You've got to find something else to take their place; somewhere where you're safe, where no one can hurt you.
- Canteen Manager: Some of those boys are really out of this world and I must say who ever designed the uniforms for this war was certainly cooking on the front burner.
- [giggle]
- Canteen Manager: They're just the cutest bunch of boys. I can't imagine, can you, where do they keep them between wars?
- Laura Pennington: I hoped here where I grew up, I might find... well, I really don't know what it was I wanted to find. A place I belonged, I guess. A place that when I woke up in the morning, I'd be glad it was another day. And when I went to sleep, I'd know that it had meant something to have been away.
- Major John Hillgrove: Well, in place of these two eyes that are gone, I have a hundred invisible ones that see things as they really are. The other senses come to your aid -- touch, smell, sound. There comes a heightening of perceptions, a sort of sensitivity to all living things. For instance, nature is more beautiful than I knew it and human beings are more understandable. Sometimes I feel it was before the Argonne that I was blind and it's only now that I see.
- Mrs. Abigail Minnett: Do you know what loneliness is, real loneliness?
- Laura Pennington: [Heavy with sadness] Yes.
- Mrs. Abigail Minnett: I thought you would.
- Beatrice Alexander: My mother warned me that men are never interested in the practical side of housekeeping.
- Oliver Bradford: It's a law.
- Mrs. Abigail Minnett: I understand you're looking for a job.
- Laura Pennington: Yes, I am. I suppose I'm really looking for a home.
- Laura Pennington: Mrs. Minnett, there is something about this cottage.
- Mrs. Abigail Minnett: There is, indeed. It needs a good cleaning, right now.
- Laura Pennington: I'm afraid you're just a couple of hundred years too late for witches.
- Danny 'Taxi' Stanton: I guess I'm a couple of hundred years too late for anything.
- Frederick 'Freddy' Price: Same dreary little place.
- Violet Price: Frederick!
- Frederick 'Freddy' Price: Oh. Charming room, isn't it?
- Mrs. Abigail Minnett: If my man could rise from his grave and walk in this minute, I should be pretty to him!
- Oliver Bradford: All of us, one way or another, were full-masted schooners, or brigantines, or whaling shapes, or even canoes, ready to sail into life. Only there we were, locked up in glass bottles.