- Miss Willey: My father always said a fishing rod had a hook at one end... and an idiot at the other.
- Chick: That's only when your old man went fishing.
- Miss Willey: [after being served the fresh-caught fish] I think I'll fix some hamburger.
- Dan: Hamburger?
- Chick: You don't like fish?
- Cathy: She loves fish.
- Miss Willey: Not this particular fish. I can't eat it.
- Chick: Now what the matter with this fish? It's good fish.
- Dan: I caught it.
- Chick: And I cooked it.
- Miss Willey: But I met this fish this afternoon. I saw him swimming. He was alive and happy. I was an accessory before the fact of his death.
- Chick: She's kidding, of course.
- Miss Willey: This morning he had his life before him. Now he's lying on my plate, coated with cracker crumbs. I'm sorry, but I can't eat him.
- Chick: How can you eat that potata? It was torn out of the ground, peeled, and boiled before your very eyes.
- Dan: What about hamburger?
- Chick: Yes, you eat beef, don't you? They slaughter beef.
- Miss Willey: I don't witness the execution. I don't spend the afternoon with a cow.
- Chick: [Chick contemplates the fish on his fork, and hesitates to eat it]
- Miss Willey: All he ever did was make a million dollars.
- Cathy: There are easier things to do. But, not as hard as what he wanted to do. He wanted to create something. He wanted to write music. You don't create a million dollars. You make it or steal it or earn it or - or trap it. Music, you've got to create. Then you've done something. However good or bad it is, it's yours. It means something and its beautiful.
- Miss Willey: Like a twenty dollar bill never is. Nobody despises money like rich people.
- Miss Willey: There's something obscene about music in the afternoon. People should be selling stocks or bonds or playing golf.
- Chick: So, you're Miss Willey.
- Miss Willey: You sound as if you're looking at the Washington Monument for the first time.
- Eugene Ormandy: You know how eccentric he was. He stopped right in the middle of the concerto, turned to the audience, and said, "You like that? I'll play it for you again."
- Artur Rubinstein: Are you nervous?
- Dan: Me? No, I'm not nervous. Not a bit.
- Artur Rubinstein: Ah, well I'm glad to hear that; because, if you were, there's not a thing to be done about it. I like your music. I like to play it.
- Dan: Thank you, sir.
- Eugene Ormandy: I am nervous, too.
- Dan: I'll fix the drinks, what'll it be?
- Miss Willey: Can we have coffee?
- Dan: If you've got to.
- Cathy: I'd like some coffee too.
- Dan: Okay, I'll fix it.
- Miss Willey: No, I'll do it. No man ever made coffee for me and no man ever will. Where's the kitchen?
- Miss Willey: Describe him.
- Cathy: Well, I think he was tall. He had dark hair. His face was strong and very sad. He had marvelous fingers.
- Miss Willey: What did he think of you?
- Cathy: He was blind.
- Miss Willey: Tonight, I'm going to take a long hot bath and read a detective story. You can't think of what profound pleasure there is in such a prospect.
- Miss Willey: What happened with George?
- Cathy: Oh, he's an absolute 24 carat idiot.
- Miss Willey: About 18 carat, I think.
- Chez Mamie Headwaiter: Table for two?
- Cathy: For one.
- Chez Mamie Headwaiter: We got a rule here, sister.
- Cathy: Really?
- Chez Mamie Headwaiter: Against dames sittin' alone.
- Cathy: Aunt Willey, what do you think I ought to do?
- Miss Willey: Just what you want to do.
- Cathy: Wish you wouldn't be so smug and full of worldly wisdom.
- Miss Willey: You're in love. I'm trying to humor you. It's a form of insanity.
- Dan: I'm Exhibit A around here. I'm the blind piano player. She wants to know how I can find the keys with only my fingers. You tell her, it's a braille piano.
- Connie: Isn't this priceless? Already I feel like a new woman. At the symphony, I'm just another ermine coat; but, here, I begin to live. I guess I'm just a patron of the lower arts.
- Cathy: [gets up from the piano] Oh, don't be such a wise old ogre. I just can't make it sound as beautiful as it really is.
- Miss Willey: I'm your Aunt, which is a blood relationship. I also run this house. I don't want to be a nagging old crone. So, tell me and get it over with.
- Cathy: Hold on, darling.
- [goes back to play the piano]
- Miss Willey: I'm not completely immunized of love's young dream.
- Dan: That's what you miss. I can feel rain or snow. I can touch a diamond or a fog, smell a rose or a river. But, color.
- Miss Willey: The thing I like about coffee is that it keeps me awake. Nothing more ridiculous than lying unconscious on a bed. Besides, I have insomnia. I like to blame it on the coffee instead of my conscience.
- Cathy: [singing] And I'll be in Scotland afore you, Mmm mmm da da-da will never meet again, On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond
- Cathy: What on earth are you trying to do?
- Miss Willey: Painting. I thought I might have a small whirl at; after all, I'm supposed to be an artist.
- Cathy: What is it supposed to represent?
- Miss Willey: You wouldn't dare say that in front of a Picasso. As a matter of fact, I started to paint Dan sitting at the piano and it turned out to be the piano sitting on Dan. No talent at all. No flair.
- Dan: I made the grade, didn't I? It's more than a hop, skip and jump from the Chez Mamie to Carnegie Hall.
- Chick: What do you say? Do you say that Mallory the millionaire glamour girl is taking you where the woodbine twineth?