- [after Joe bails his brother, Doris and the others out of jail]
- Doris Lowry: You know I've got my whole life to think about now and you won't be of any help.
- Joe Morse: How do you know? You know everything I touch turns to gold. It's raining out and I promised my brother to take you home.
- Doris Lowry: Well, that's a lie.
- Joe Morse: Well, it's not true; but I would have had he asked. You know you can't tell about your life 'til you're all through living it. Come on, I'll give you a lift. You're tired, I'm tireder. What can happen to either one of us? You tell me the story of your life and maybe I can suggest a happy ending.
- Doris Lowry: You're a strange man... and a very evil one.
- Joe Morse: And you're a sweet child, and you want me to be wicked to you.
- Doris Lowry: Now what are you talking about?
- Joe Morse: Because you're wicked. Really wicked.
- Doris Lowry: What are talking so crazy for, Mr. Morse?
- Joe Morse: Because you're squirming for me to do something wicked to you. Make a pass for you, bowl you over, sweep you up, take the childishness out of you, and give you money and sin. That's real wickedness.
- [last lines - voice over]
- Joe Morse: I found my brother's body at the bottom there, where they had thrown it away on the rocks... by the river... like an old dirty rag nobody wants. He was dead - and I felt I had killed him. I turned back to give myself up to Hall; because if a man's life can be lived so long and come out this way - like rubbish - then something was horrible and had to be ended one way or another... and I decided to help.
- Sylvia Morse: [referring to Joe] Don't have anything to do with him, Leo. You're a businessman.
- Leo Morse: Yes. I've been a businessman all my life. And honest - I don't know what a business is.
- Sylvia Morse: Well, you had a garage... you had a real estate business.
- Leo Morse: A lot you know. Real estate business... living from mortgage to mortgage... stealing credit like a thief. And the garage - that was a business! Three cents overcharge on every gallon of gas: two cents for the chauffeur and a penny for me. Penny for one thief, two cents for the other. Well, Joe's here now - I won't have to steal pennies anymore. I'll have big crooks to steal dollars for me!
- Joe Morse: If you need a broken man to love, break your husband. I'm not a nickel, I don't spend my life in a telephone! If that's what you want for love, you can't use me.
- Edna Tucker: You're not strong or weak enough.
- Joe Morse: I didn't have enough strength to resist corruption, but I was strong enough to fight for a piece of it.
- Leo Morse: I am sensible. I am calm. I'll give you my answer calmly and sensibly, my final answer. My final answer is finally no. The answer is no! Absolutely and finally no! Finally and positively no! No! No! No! N - O!
- Edna Tucker: You're wide open, Joe. I can see into you without looking.
- Joe Morse: Don't bother; besides it's not nice to do.
- Edna Tucker: More interesting than when you have a rock for a husband like mine. He's a stone, that man. Whole world are rocks and stones to him.
- Joe Morse: Why tell me? Tell him.
- Edna Tucker: Never tell him anything. Makes me feel unnecessary.
- Joe Morse: If I make you feel NECESSARY then I'm making a mistake.
- Joe Morse: Wouldn't you like to celebrate on a really large scale, Miss Lowry?
- Doris Lowry: What are you celebrating, Mr. Morse?
- Joe Morse: A clear conscience.
- Doris Lowry: Oh, whose?
- Joe Morse: I'm a lawyer - your clever little lawyer - and I've taken over the formation of this numbers monopoly to make it legal, respectable, and very profitable for you. And I've done it for two reasons.
- Ben Tucker: What's the second reason?
- [opening lines - voice over]
- Joe Morse: This is Wall Street... and today was important because tomorrow - July Fourth - I intended to make my first million dollars. An exciting day in any man's life. Temporarily, the enterprise was slightly illegal. You see I was the lawyer for the numbers racket.
- Joe Morse: The suckers bet in any combination of three numbers selected from the totals bet at some racetrack that day. Twenty million bettors a day in the United States; annual income to cheap crooks and racketeers: over one hundred million dollars. It seemed a shame for so much good money to go to waste... in other people's pockets.
- Hobe Wheelock: Joe, you usually know what you're doing. But it's one thing to represent Tucker legally - as his lawyer, I mean. I mean, it's the business of lawyers to protect a lot of people. They even teach that at Harvard.