“The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die--with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. "Poor lady," they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven.”

“I hope to die in my sleep, when the time comes, and I hope it will be in the beautiful big brass bed in my New Orleans apartment, the bed which is associated with so much love.”

“Why, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of 'em born and all of em' going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine! Or anyone else's, as far as that goes - gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many!”

“My head don't work any more and it's hard for me to understand how anybody could care if he lived or died or was dying or cared about anything but whether or not there was liquor left in the bottle and so I said what I said without thinking. In some ways I'm no better than the others, in some ways worse because I'm less alive. Maybe it's being alive that makes them lie, and being almost not alive that makes me sort of accidentally truthful--I don't know but--anyway--we've been friends...And being friends is telling each other the truth...”

“I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?”

“When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.”

“--- What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? --- I wish I knew ...Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can ...[More croquet sounds]Later tonight I'm going to tell you I love you an' maybe by that time you'll be drunk enough to believe me. Yes, they're playing croquet ...Big Daddy is dying of cancer ...What were you thinking of when I caught you looking at me like that? Were you thinking of Skipper?[Brick crosses to the bar, takes a quick drink, and rubs his head with a towel]Laws of silence don't work ...When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant ....Get dressed, Brick.”