- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Why must they make some harmless weekend seem like a vulgar, obscene escapade? What kind of minds have these women got? Oh, whatever I've done, I've done to myself! Not the baby!
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: I'm going to be an actress.
- Mrs. Dudley: Oh, now you start that again! You don't know what you're talking about. It takes years of training to become a successful actress.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: I can walk and talk and shout as well as any other!
- Mrs. 'Ma' Frazier: Did you enjoy your season in Buffalo, Mr. Williams?
- Mr. Williams: Oh, very much. Good audiences, nice theatre.
- Daisy Dawn: I always found the Buffalo people most hospitable to the members of our stock company.
- Mr. Williams: The women did make rather a fuss over me, but then it helps business.
- Daisy Dawn: I must say the men made rather a fuss over me too when I used to go to the Sticks for summer stock.
- Mr. Clifton: Did you have much trouble with the Indians in those days?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Actors aren't supposed to be human beings, are they? They're strange animals always on exhibition.
- David Belasco: Caroline!
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Why people love to admire them as they would a good bit of horseflesh, or a brilliant peacock spreading its feathers.
- Mrs. Brooks: Your Honor, must I answer?
- Divorce Judge: Yes.
- Mrs. Brooks: Well, if I must - she was smoking a cigarette.
- Divorce Judge: Is that all she was doing?
- Mrs. Brooks: For the moment, yes. A little while later she rouged her lips right out in public.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: This is absurd!
- Defense Assistant: Please be quiet Mrs. Carter.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: They make smoking a cigarette sound as if...
- Defense Attorney Graham: Please, please Mrs. Carter you must control yourself.
- Mrs. 'Ma' Frazier: Toledo. Played it in '76 with my third husband, Leo Snitz. Faces: queer, quaint and quizzical. Harrigan and Hart were on the bill with us. That was show business then. Nothing like it any more. The theatre's dead!
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: What a nice room!
- Mrs. 'Ma' Frazier: Best room in the house. Lots of fine actors and actresses have slept here. Don't misunderstand me. I run a very respectable house. I don't stand for any monkey business and don't forget it.
- David Belasco: How do you do, Mrs. Carter? Many young beginners come to me for advice. I tell them all the same thing... Work, work, work. See good plays and well trained actors, especially mine. Keep your health, keep your figure, hang onto your money. And while you have it, don't lend it to actors. That covers all - I think. This has been a pleasure, Mrs. O'Conner.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: I should be best in comedy; but, that remains with you. You see, Mr. Fairchild's sufficiently interested to finance the whole arrangement.
- David Belasco: Has he seen you act?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Oh, I never have! But, I have the one great essential.
- David Belasco: Genius.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Determination!
- David Belasco: I found a new play for you Caroline. A great play.
- Mrs. Dudley: My daughter isn't interested.
- David Belasco: Not interested? Since when? But, of course, she's interested. Sit down. Let me tell you. It's perfect for you! You're a poor little French peasant. But, beautiful! Oh, so beautiful! And you're in love - with a young student. Romance. Beautiful. Exquisite romance! Act 2. Paris. Wonderful evenings on Montparnasse. Watching the stars flicker over the spires of Sacré-Coeur. Ecstasy! Sheer ecstasy! Oh, and then the lights of Paris dazzle you. And you want to become a part of them. You do a foolish, tragic thing.
- David Belasco: I want you to read some lines for me.
- Mrs. Peabody: I will not. I'm a cook!
- David Belasco: How'd you know you're not an actress?
- Mrs. Peabody: I've seen some of yours. And I'm not that kind of a cook!
- David Belasco: Stop it! Stop it! You're just a clumsy clothes horse with a million elbows.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: What's wrong with my elbows?
- David Belasco: Everything! You act with them, think with them, talk with them. Pretty soon you'll be sticking them in the eyes of the audience.
- David Belasco: Why can't you relax?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Well, how can anyone relax with you?
- David Belasco: You could relax in an earthquake if you'd only do what I tell you.
- David Belasco: Don't be frightened. Drop everything. Your parts. Your arms. Your legs. Your brain. What ever you got. Now, may I? Relax! That's it. That's it. Now, just remember, you're suspended by a rope in the center of your head to the ceiling. You're walking on air. You're not self-conscious. You're not awkward now, are you? You can be frightened to death; but, you can make an entrance and hold any audience. They can hiss at you, yell at you, throw dead cats at you; but, they can't destroy your poise! If you just remember you're suspended from the ceiling by the red hair of your head.
- Lou Payne: It takes a stout heart to be in show business, Caroline. You got to know how to stay fat on failures and happy on hopes.
- David Belasco: Where are you going?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: To get married and then to Scranton with my husband.
- David Belasco: Married? Husband? Scranton? Scranton! I might have expected this. Good-bye!
- David Belasco: Get this into your head: there's nothing so selfish as art - and to succeed you have to sacrifice everything to it! Every interests in friends, home life, domesticity, love. You've got to be selfish! Self-centered. Hard. Can you do it?
- David Belasco: Did you imagine, my dear child, that you are pleading with your lover?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: I was trying to.
- David Belasco: I beg to contradict you, Mrs. Carter. You were trying to render she is only a bird in a gilded cage and you are doing that atrociously!
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Oh, I don't know what I'm doing now!
- David Belasco: Well, so long as we're honest about it, there's hope!
- David Belasco: Caroline, you've conquered New York. That means you've conquered the world. You can have anything you want.
- David Belasco: That theatre's an illusion, Madam. It's best for those outside not to know too much about it.
- London Party Guest: But, it's so fascinating. For instance, where do you get your wonderful ideas?
- David Belasco: They usually emerge like mermaids out of a sea of perspiration.
- London Party Guest: What do you think?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Oh, I think champagne goes flat almost as quickly as most conversations.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: May I have a cigarette please?
- Wealthy London Host: I beg your pardon?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Oh, don't worry. I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to smoke it.
- Stock Company Manager: Why don't you try to understand, Lou. This is business!
- Lou Payne: Oh, business, my eye. You've got me skating in the ring so the stage-struck gals can make my acquaintance. Sitting in the park so the nurse maids can stare at me. Posing around cigar stores so as to be popular with the boys. I draw the line - I will not meet strange women after the show.
- Stock Company Manager: But, that's what makes stock stars, Lou. You've got to mix!
- Lou Payne: I'm paid to act.
- Stock Company Manager: Rats! You're paid because you have a matinee face that makes the women feel reckless. But, if they can only look at you over the footlights without being introduced, they get that, "well, he ain't for me" feeling and they stay away from the theater. You've got to hold your female clientele by a slight acquaintance. Not too much. Just enough. See what I mean?
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: Tell me about yourself.
- Lou Payne: Oh, I just plogged along. Now I'm a ham leading man in a cheap stock company.
- David Belasco: When I found you on my doorstep like a drowned puppy in the rain, what landed you there? Genius? Or, was it cheap emotionalism? Unbridled temper? And the assurance of a foolish young woman. I took these very qualities that had made your life a failure. I gave them discipline, balance, purpose, and turned them into an art - until the whole world could see the *genius* that I had built up in you. And now you're flaunting it in my face.
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: So, I was just part of your puppet show, was I? And you pulled the strings.
- David Belasco: Yes. I pulled the strings.
- Lou Payne: You can't walk out of a production. Think of all the money invested in you and those actors jobs. Even if you can't be a hit, at least you can be a trooper!
- Mrs. Leslie Carter: [on stage, as "Mrs. Hartley"] Time does lots of things, John. It makes you old, slows down your reflexes, and it gives you sudden aches in unexpected places. But, somehow, it doesn't seem to stop the tears you shed on lonely nights - for the loves that might have been. So, we live our years. We laugh and we cry and there's one moment's happiness in an hour of sorrow and then we grow old. And there's only one joy left for us: the joy of reunion.