- [last lines]
- Susan Brown: Joe, wasn't it absolutely the most wonderful wedding? Now we really belong to each other, till death us do part. Darling, you're crying! I believe you really are sentimental after all.
- Joe Lampton: I'll tell you something, Alice. I like you, I don't mean sex, I mean "like you". I like to talk to you. I just - like you.
- Alice Aisgill: To think I ever let you touch me. Now listen, I own my own body and I'm not ashamed of it. And I'm not ashamed of anything I've ever done.
- Joe Lampton: I hate you to put your clothes on.
- Alice Aisgill: It's very sweet of you honey, but I'm too old to walk about in my girdle.
- Joe Lampton: Alice, you're beautiful. I'd like a picture of you like that.
- Alice Aisgill: There is a picture of me in the nude - somewhere.
- Joe Lampton: You're joking.
- Alice Aisgill: No, there really is. I was in the university at that time. And I met an artist at a party. He wanted a model. I don't suppose it was even a good painting.
- Joe Lampton: Why? Why did have to do it? There are a millions of women, a lot poorer than you in the world, who'd rather die than expose themselves for a few lousy rotten shillings. Damn you to hell, I feel like, like to beat you black and blue.
- Alice Aisgill: What's it got to do with you? It was long before I met you. I must remember your beasty little provincial mind doesn't like nudity.
- Joe Lampton: You stupid bitch, it isn't that at all! Don't you see that it's the idea of other people looking at you nakedness that I hate, it's indecent, don't you see?
- Susan Brown: Seriously Joe, there's something wrong, isn't there? Don't you like the way I make love?
- Charles Soames: Oh, I like it very much. It reminds me of a good set of mixed tennis.
- Charles Soames: You're such a honest person. Why the hell do you have to be so honest? Darling, I'm glad you're honest. I love you for it.
- Mavis: And what do you really sell?
- Joe Lampton: I told you, I specialize in ladies underwear.
- Mavis: Ha, ha, ha! Oh, you're a devil.
- Alice Aisgill: [to George, her husband] I think you know everybody, don't you?
- George Aisgill: [looking at everyone seated next to Alice] Yes, I think so.
- Alice Aisgill: [pointing in Joe's direction, he who is standing to the other side] No, of course, this is Joe Lampton, my lover in the play.
- George Aisgill: [snidely] The war hero. Well, I'm always glad to meet one of Alice's lovers.
- Charles Soames: It's not for you lad.
- Joe Lampton: But I can look, can't I?
- Charles Soames: Not with that you can. There's a law against undressing women in street.
- Mr. Hoylake: You'll be working with Soames. Internal Audit. He's got digs somewhere near Top. Top's the fashionable district. He's very comfortable, I believe.
- June Samson: Well Charles how about those reports?
- Charles Soames: Oh, those Stampton reports, now where did I put them? Somewhere in... Have you tried looking under your skirt?
- June Samson: What do you mean?
- Charles Soames: You're sitting on them, love.
- Charles Soames: Look Joe, there's the Top. That's where the money is. Lots of lovely houses up there, you know Joe.
- Joe Lampton: I'll have one of those. I'm going to have the lot.
- Joe Lampton: By the way, what do you do for entertainment around here?
- Charles Soames: Well, there are flicks of course.
- Teddy Merrick: Didn't you think she was a absolutely super, Joe?
- Joe Lampton: Oh, absolutely super.
- Teddy Merrick: I thought they were all absolutely super.
- Joe Lampton: It just so happens that I like her.
- Charles Soames: You lust after her, you mean.
- Joe Lampton: No. No-no. It's not that at all. Well, it's - partly that but not just that.
- Joe Lampton: Time I filled you in on the Lampton report on love. I 've got a full proof method for grading women. Partly money, partly background, partly J. Lampton's instinct. Now take Susan Brown.
- Charles Soames: Are you offering her to me?
- Joe Lampton: No, seriously, Susan is grade one on every account.
- Mrs. Brown: What did you say his name was ?
- Susan Brown: Lampton, Joe Lampton.
- Mrs. Brown: Curious names some of these people have.
- Joe Lampton: You know, you're the sort of girl I like to take out.
- Susan Brown: Why?
- Joe Lampton: Well, there's you're shape and you're size and the sheen in your hair, a sort of light in your eyes. Oh but, the most important, because, I think you're a dear-keeper.
- Susan Brown: A what?
- Joe Lampton: A dear-keeper.
- Susan Brown: What a lovely word! What does it mean?
- Joe Lampton: My mother used to call me that every time I used to ask her for something that cost more than she could afford.
- Susan Brown: I'd like to meet your mother, she sounds fun.
- Joe Lampton: She's dead.
- Mrs. Brown: Don't you mind her getting mixed up with a small town nobody.
- Mr. Brown: Small town nobodies sometimes do well enough. You saw that wrong once with one, mother.
- Mrs. Brown: I happen to be Susan's mother, not yours.
- Alice Aisgill: I'd like to go to Sparrow Hill.
- Joe Lampton: It's cold up there.
- Alice Aisgill: That's what I want. Somewhere cold and clean. With no people, no dirty people.
- Mr. Brown: I want to build a new administration block not a ladies lavatory! We make machine tools at Brown's, remember, not silk stockings!
- Elspeth: You're the sort of man I like. Too many pansies about these days. I knew a lot of real men once, they're all dead now.
- Susan Brown: Joe, why didn't you write?
- Joe Lampton: You didn't write either. Only postcards.
- Susan Brown: I was waiting for you to write. A girl can't write first. She can't if she has any pride.
- Alice Aisgill: That's what you like, isn't it? Leg show and lingerie. It's indecent for me to pose for an artist who sees me as an arrangement of lines and color; but, it's perfectly okay for you to kiss me all over and lay for an hour just looking at me! I suppose it gives you a thrill. A dirty little thrill. I suppose you see me as your own private dirty postcard. You can't imagine that a man could look at a naked woman without wanting to make love to her! Can you?
- Susan Brown: Is that what prim Joe wants?
- Charles Soames: No, that's not what Joe wants. You know what Joe wants. It's what all the Joe's want.
- Susan Brown: Oh, Joe.
- Charles Soames: This is only the beginning.
- Alice Aisgill: Please walk away now, darling. Walk away, don't look back. Think of me.
- George Aisgill: It will make fine reading: Elspeth's flat, the naked bathing in Dorset, and all the rest of it.
- Alice Aisgill: Oh, to hell with you! You think our love is just like a - layer of dirt, that I can wash it off? I believe in our love. What else have I got? It's all I have to believe in.