- Pat Cooper: [to John about his relationship with Ann] When you're together, you slash each other to pieces. When you're alone, you slash yourselves to pieces.
- Ann Shankland: I didn't mean any harm.
- John Malcolm: That's when you do the most damage.
- Ann Shankland: We all make mistakes.
- John Malcolm: You specialize in them.
- Ann Shankland: You're making it a bit too obvious, you know, that you hate the very sight of me.
- John Malcolm: The very sight of you is perhaps the one thing about you I don't hate.
- Mr. Fowler: The trouble about being on the side of right, as one sees it, is that one often finds oneself in the company of such very questionable allies.
- Mrs. Railton-Bell: We want your views on Major Pollock.
- Miss Meacham: Do you? Well, my views of Major Pollock are that he's always been a crashing old bore and a wicked old fraud, and now I hear he's a dirty old man too. I'm not surprised, and, quite between these four walls, I don't give a damn.
- Lady Matheson: [Reprovingly, talking about Sybil] I'm surprised at you, Mr. Malcolm. You should not have brought her into it.
- John Malcolm: I suppose not. I thought I might get her once, just this once in her whole life, to publicly disagree with her mother. It'd save her soul if she ever did.
- Mrs. Railton-Bell: Are you on the side of Mr. Malcolm and his defense of vice or are you on the side of the Christian virtues - like Mr. Fowler and myself?
- John Malcolm: Never in my life have I heard a question so disgracefully begged. You should be in politics, Mrs. Railton-Bell.
- Sibyl Railton-Bell: He says we're alike, he and I.
- Ann Shankland: Did he?
- Sibyl Railton-Bell: He said we're both afraid of life and people and sex. There! I've said it. I've said the word! He said I hate saying it even and I do. He's right! He's right! I do! I do.
- Sibyl Railton-Bell: Why did you do it. WHY did you DO it?
- Major Angus Pollock: I don't know. I wish I could answer that. Why does anybody do anything that they shouldn't? Why do some people drink too much and other people smoke 50 cigarettes a day? Because they can't stop it, I suppose.
- Sibyl Railton-Bell: Then it wasn't the first time?
- Major Angus Pollock: No...
- Sibyl Railton-Bell: Oh, it's horrible...
- Major Angus Pollock: Yes, it is, of course. I'm not trying to defend it... You'll never guess this, I know, but ever since school I've always been scared to death of women... of everyone, in a way, I suppose, but mostly of women. I had a bad time at school - which wasn't Wellington, of course, it was just a counsel school... Boys hate other boys to be timid and shy, and they gave it to me good and proper. My father despised me, too. He was a Sergeant major in the Scots Guards. He made me join the Army, but I was always a bitter disappointment to him. He died before I got my commission. I got that by a wangle, too. It wasn't very difficult at the beginning of the war. But it meant everything to me, just the same: being saluted, being called "sir". I thought, "I'm someone now, a real person. Perhaps some woman might even..." But it didn't work. It never has worked. I'm made in a certain way and I can't change it.
- Ann Shankland: It's hard to believe, but, you can be more alone in New York than this hotel. Even though there's separate tables, they can talk back and forth.
- Miss Meacham: And what do I know of morals and ethics? Only what I read in novels. And as I only read thrillers, that doesn't amount to much.
- Sibyl Railton-Bell: Why have you told so many awful lies?
- Major Angus Pollock: Because I don't like myself the way I am, i suppose. I had to invent someone else... It's not harmful really. We all have our daydreams. Mine have just gone a step further than most people.
- [laughs ironically]
- Major Angus Pollock: Sometimes I just manage to believe in the Major myself.
- John Malcolm: My ideas of a wife were influenced by watching my mother ruin her health to bring up eight kids. Not that my demands on you would have been as high as that. But, they would have included the proper running of a home and the bearing of children.
- Ann Shankland: About children, I did make it perfectly clear...
- John Malcolm: I know, I know. The beautiful fashion model. That little hobby of yours. Your figure was too important to risk for posterity.
- Ann Shankland: The same old John. Wearing out the same old cascade of truths, half-truths and distortions. Well, human nature isn't as simple as you make it, John. You left out the most important fact of all. You see, you're the only person in the world that I've ever really been fond of. Notice how tactfully I leave out the word love. Give me a cigarette.
- Pat Cooper: I said there was a refuge for you here. I was wrong! There is no refuge. There's no refuge from yourself.
- Mr. Fowler: The cook's acquiring a lighter touch with her pastries, don't you think?
- Miss Meacham: Not judging by the tarts we had at tea yesterday. Cannonballs! Simply cannonballs!
- Mr. Fowler: Tolerance is not necessarily a good. Tolerance of evil can itself be an evil. After all, wasn't it Aristotle who said...
- Miss Meacham: Oh, really! You've all gone on far too long about. And when you start quoting Aristotle, personally, I'm going to me room.
- Ann Shankland: Why would I have married you if I didn't love you? After all, there were others - more important men.
- John Malcolm: They couldn't pay you the full price.
- Ann Shankland: What price?
- John Malcolm: Enslavement!
- Ann Shankland: If all I wanted to do was make my husband a slave, why would I have chosen you and not the others?
- John Malcolm: Cause where would the fun have been? Where would the fun have been enslaving men like that? A tame millionaire? A mincing baronet? To well brought you to say anything when you denied them their conjugal rights! Too well mannered not to take you headaches at bedtime as *just* headaches at bedtime. Where would the fun have been turning your weapons on men like that?
- Ann Shankland: Being alone in a crowd is worse. It's more painful. More frightening. So frightening. So frightening.
- Major Angus Pollock: Mark you, Jerry in the desert is a very different cup of tea from Jerry on the Western Front.
- Mrs. Railton-Bell: Quite obvious they were making love.
- Lady Matheson: How do you know?
- Mrs. Railton-Bell: He was putting a handkerchief away with lipstick on it.
- Mrs. Railton-Bell: Of course, I realize you must miss some of the gaieties of life: the balls and cocktail parties and things that a few other lucky young people can enjoy. I do my best, you know.
- Sibyl Railton-Bell: Yes, I know you do, Mummy. Yes, I know.
- John Malcolm: What has he done that's any worst than the people who cheapen love making? Who use it as a weapon to get what they want.
- Ann Shankland: We could make-believe couldn't we? We could wipe out everything that's happened to us. The waves rolling in all night long. Remember?