- Jed Towers: Another rye, please. You married?
- Joe the Bartender: Sure. Who's not?
- Jed Towers: You and your wife fight... argue all the time?
- Joe the Bartender: Some of the time she sleeps.
- Jed Towers: Seventy-eight percent of the pilots in Skyway Airlines are married. Ya' see, you get married, you become a statistic.
- Joe the Bartender: Yeah... Stay single, and you wind up talkin' to bartenders.
- Jed Towers: Hello. Are you the girl in 809?
- Nell Forbes: Why, yes. Who is
- [Jed answers before Nell finishes her question]
- Jed Towers: I'm the guy in 821, across the court. Can I ask you a question?
- Nell Forbes: I don't know; I suppose so. Are you sure you want me?
- Jed Towers: Yeah, you're the one I want, all right. Are you doing anything you couldn't be doing better with somebody else?
- Nell Forbes: I guess I'll have to hang up!
- Jed Towers: Why? You cant get hurt on a telephone.
- Nell Forbes: Who are you?
- Jed Towers: I told you. The man across the way; a lonely soul.
- Nell Forbes: You sound peculiar.
- Jed Towers: I'm not peculiar; I'm just frustrated. And I got a bottle of rye. And as I was saying, what are you doing?
- Nell Forbes: What's your name?
- Jed Towers: Uh... Billy.
- Nell Forbes: Oh...
- Jed Towers: What's the matter? Don't you like Billy?
- Jed Towers: [to elevator operator] You're lucky to have such a steady job.
- Eddie Forbes: Oh - it has its ups and downs - most people laugh at that one, sir.
- Bunny Jones: To the automatic?
- Peter Jones: No, sweetie, the Automat.
- Bunny Jones: Where they have food that you put in a nickel and it comes out like music in a jukebox?
- Peter Jones: Right.
- Jed Towers: I said: "Look, I believe in a drink, a kiss, and a laugh now and then." That's the way it'd be. "Fine," she said, I can hear her saying it now. "Fine, I like to laugh."
- Lyn Lesley: I still like to laugh... but not at myself. I just don't want it any more. Life's too long.
- Jed Towers: All right, I'll send you a valentine. What *do* you want? Hearts and flowers? Forever and ever? Love?
- Lyn Lesley: Don't be afraid to say it; it's not a dirty word.
- Jed Towers: What am I supposed to do about it?
- Lyn Lesley: Fly back to Chicago. Find another bar. Find another girl.
- Jed Towers: Or find a wedding ring? Marriage isn't always the answer to everything, you know.
- Lyn Lesley: Who's talking about marriage?
- Jed Towers: Weren't you?
- Lyn Lesley: No. But I'm sure that's all you thought I had on my mind. That's where you're wrong. That's just the point. I wouldn't want to marry you.
- Jed Towers: Why not?
- Lyn Lesley: It's something to do with the way you are.
- Janey: They're all finished, Mister. We got a new process that develops them right away; instantaneous. The patent is pending. You can take your choice. There's the postcard, the folder, the matches, the handkerchief, and the ashtray. A dollar per each, except the ashtray; he's $2.
- Jed Towers: I'll take one "per each".
- Janey: Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot! He's a doll!
- Mrs. Emma Ballew: After all, if anything dreadful is going on upstairs, it's our duty to do something about it.
- Mr. Ballew: [Preoccupied with his stamp collection] Don't be a peeping pansy. Leave 'em alone.
- Mrs. Emma Ballew: I think we should call the house detective.
- Mr. Ballew: Huh. That one! He couldn't detect a monk in a convent!
- Mrs. Emma Ballew: Well, heaven only knows what's going on right across the way.
- Ruth Jones: [after Bunny has been untied] My goodness, Bunny, what have they done to you?
- Bunny Jones: Oh, mommy... that lady!
- Ruth Jones: I know, dear. I guess we've never seen anybody like her.
- Jed Towers: Why didn't you tell me you were working here?
- Nell Forbes: I'm not. I'm just doing it for the night.
- Jed Towers: Yeah, I know. You're an heiress. Tomorrow morning, you ride through your estate sidesaddle.
- Nell Forbes: She made you say that!
- [first lines]
- Mrs. Emma Ballew: After all, we guests who live here from year to year, we deserve a little consideration, too.
- [Last lines]
- Lyn Lesley: [Watching Nell being led away] Jed, you care what happens to that girl, don't you.
- Jed Towers: She didn't want to hurt the kid. She didn't wanna hurt anybody.
- Lyn Lesley: [Lyn taking Jed by the arm] You do care.
- Lyn Lesley: [Walking slowly arm in arm] Come on, I'd like to buy you that drink now.
- Lyn Lesley: [singing] I like New York in June, How about you? I like a Gershwin tune, How about you? I love a fireside when a storm is due, I like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips, How about you? I'm mad about good books, Can't get my fill, And Tyrone Power's looks, Give me a thrill, Holding hands in the movie show, When all the lights are low May not be new, But I like it, How about you?
- Lyn Lesley: [singing] We'll have Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island too, It's lovely going through, The zoo...
- Eddie Forbes: You been here as long as I have, you take an interest in things outside the elevator. Would you like lipstick tissue? Sometimes they forget to leave them in the rooms.
- Ruth Jones: Well, thank you.
- Eddie Forbes: That's a $5 idea! They just got hold of it last week.
- Eddie Forbes: I just got the wind knocked out of me.
- Jed Towers: You're wrong, boy. You almost got the brains bashed out of you.
- Lyn Lesley: [singing] Oh, I'm a rollin' stone, Just a-rolli-olli-ollin' on and on, I'm a rollin' stone, That's just been here and gone, Gotta move on...
- Bunny Jones: Are you tattooed?
- Nell Forbes: No. Are you?
- Bunny Jones: Not now. But I'm gonna be when I grow up.
- Jed Towers: You know, I met a girl right here - right here at this bar, six months ago. Six months and a week. I asked her to sing a song. She did. And it gave me gooseflesh and notions.
- Lyn Lesley: [singing] Oh, there's a lull in my life, It's just a void, an empty space, When you are not in my embrace...
- Jed Towers: What's been wrong with it?
- Lyn Lesley: Nothing much. It's what was going to be wrong with it. Call it the old blank wall. The future without a future.
- Jed Towers: Little Miss Larceny.
- Lyn Lesley: She's a nice kid, Jed.
- Jed Towers: Reminds me of a chicken thief I used to know.
- Lyn Lesley: [singing] How blue the night, How long the day, How blue the night, With you away, How strange it seems, Just living in dreams, And left in the moon glow...
- Nell Forbes: You could have stuff like this, Nell. Kimonos, and rings, and toilet water with Italian names. A handsome girl like you.
- Eddie Forbes: No, I can't! I can't!
- Lyn Lesley: All you can focus on is the cold outside of things. The simple facts. Not any causes or whys or wherefores. Oh, you're sweet - and you're fun. And you're *hard*. You lack something I ask for in a man.
- Jed Towers: And what's that?
- Lyn Lesley: An understanding heart.
- Nell Forbes: I like you.
- Jed Towers: Thanks.
- Nell Forbes: I'll probably dream about you tonight.
- Jed Towers: Don't be rash.
- Nell Forbes: You came over to flirt, didn't you?
- Jed Towers: Well, I guess that was the general idea.
- Nell Forbes: I don't mind. As long as you're not grouchy about it.
- Jed Towers: Oh, I'm never grouchy.
- Jed Towers: How are you going? To South America.
- Nell Forbes: Oh. By sea. Are you really going? How?
- Jed Towers: By turtle. I own a big turtle, I'm gonna ride on his back.
- Nell Forbes: [giggles] Well, some day I will. I'm going to go down there and drink a lot of coffee. I'm going to talk to all the parrots. Maybe we'll go together.
- Nell Forbes: I haven't had earrings on for three years. All through high school, I never had a dress to wear out at night. If I liked a boy, my folks would whip me. When I went away from them, I didn't cry. A month ago, I came here on a bus from Oregon. At night on the highway, we'd pass those big trucks with those little lights all over them - like Christmas trees. And then I was here. I'd walk down the street, look in the beautiful stores. Eddie calls it "window-wishing." Then I got this job tonight.
- [looks down at negligee she's wearing]
- Nell Forbes: And this was hanging up. And the earrings. I couldn't help it. I was gonna put them back.
- Jed Towers: I'm sorry I made fun of you. Things will be better. They even up, bad breaks, good breaks.
- Nell Forbes: If you go, then none of it can be true.
- Jed Towers: None of what? Half the time, I don't know what you're talking about.
- Jed Towers: I can't figure you out. You're silk on one side and sandpaper on the other.
- Nell Forbes: I'll be any way you want me to be.
- Eddie Forbes: I've been an elevator jockey for 14 years. Ain't that enough to get out of life without any more trouble?
- Nell Forbes: He tries to get tough. He doesn't have any respect what people really want. I know what I mean.
- Jed Towers: You mean he hasn't got an understanding heart.
- Nell Forbes: Yes, that's it exactly. He's not the way you are at all.
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