- Pinky Johnson: I'm a Negro. I can't forget it, and I can't deny it. I can't pretend to be anything else, and I don't want to be anything else. Don't you see, Tom?
- Dr. Thomas Adams: No, I don't.
- Pinky Johnson: You can't live without pride.
- Judge Walker: The expressed wishes of the dead should not be set aside to gratify the greed or the prejudice of the living.
- Melba Wooley: Cousin Em, what do you mean, gettin' sick like this?
- Miss Em: When you're eighty years old, you expect to be sick. Sit down.
- Melba Wooley: Now, now. Naughty, naughty. Eighty years *young* is what we say.
- Miss Em: I don't. It's old, and I won't have it minimized. Takes a lot of livin' to get there, and pure, cursed endurance. Eighty years young indeed!
- Pinky Johnson: Miss Em told me to always be myself, not to pretend. You told me that after I marry you, there won't be a Pinky Johnson anymore. How can I be myself if there's no Pinky Johnson anymore?
- Judge Walker: Your honor, this is a small country town. We've always thought that what happened here was our own private concern. This is no longer true. Just as it is no longer true that our country as a whole can exist entirely to itself. What is done in our courts in cases such as this has become a matter of moment in the eyes of the world. Let us examine our conscience. Let us look into our attitude and our tradition. Let us take care lest it be said of us that here there is neither law nor justice.
- Melba Wooley: What an idea to make a will. Why, you'll live years and years, dear!
- Miss Em: Pinky's a nurse. She graduated from one of the best hospitals up yonder. Let's ask her. Think I should be makin' my will?
- Pinky Johnson: Well, if you were ever gonna make a will, Miss Em, it's time you were getting it done.
- Miss Em: There, Melba. There's a nurse's opinion. Very sensible, especially as it agrees with my own.
- Judge Walker: I have here a note from Dr. Joe in which he says he's going to be delayed. Now, on the basis of this note, I petition for a brief recess.
- Mr. Stanley: May I see this note, please? Do I have your permission, Judge Walker, to read this to the court?
- Judge Walker: You certainly have.
- Mr. Stanley: "Sorry, Mary Picken's baby jumped the gun. When it gets here, I'll get there. - Joe McGill"
- Miss Em: I'm not gonna lie flat until I'm laid out. Be soon enough now.
- Dr. Joe McGill: Might as well let her have her own way.
- Miss Em: That's all I ever wanted: to have my own way.
- Dicey Johnson: Pinky, I worked long and hard to give you an education. And if they done educated the very heart out'ch you, everything I've worked and slaved for is wrong.
- Jake Walters: Well, there's work and then there's work. My biggest work, I do it with my brain.
- Dicey Johnson: Liable to get top-heavy overworking that brain, eh, Jake?
- Jake Walters: That's the way to rise up in the world. No more being the skim milk for Jake Walters. He's gonna be the cream on top.
- Dicey Johnson: Cream gotta be cream first before it rise.