- Jack: Are you mad at me?
- Kate Burroughs: You got it!
- Jack: You picked a helluva time to get irrational.
- Kate Burroughs: Oh, I'm not irrational. Rational people get angry. Irrational people pretend they don't.
- Danny: [talking about Nick] He's been having affairs all along. Dozens.
- Jack: [disbelief] You're kidding.
- Danny: How could you not know? They even slept at your place once.
- Jack: Where was I?
- Danny: You gave him the key to water your plants and feed the cats while you were away. Didn't you notice the funny expression on the cats' faces?
- Jack: He told you all of this?
- Danny: Most of it... some of it came out when he was under gas.
- Danny: [furiously at Jack] Goddamn it! I just told you my deepest fear! Why can't you listen to what I'm saying instead of how I'm saying it? I mean, do you have any idea, any idea, what it is to be afraid of death? I can't eat my bowl of cereal anymore because I have an irrational fear of milk. I stand there in hallways, where - I - I stand there in hallways afraid to press strange elevator buttons. I almost threw away my jockey shorts because I have this fear of elastic.
- [Kate begins laughing hysterically]
- Ginny: Don't laugh at him.
- Danny: No. Go on, go on, laugh. Right. Good. Good. I'm a fool, right? No,
- Kate Burroughs: No, Danny.
- Danny: I'm a collection of eccentricities. You think because I'm quirky, I don't hurt?
- Kate Burroughs: No
- Danny: Well, you have it wrong. I'm quirky because I hurt.
- Kate Burroughs: Oh, Danny, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Now, come on - are you really afraid of your underwear?
- [she starts laughing again]
- Nick: [to Jack, about Anne's obsessive photography of vegetables] For a year and a half, all we talked about was zucchini. Then for another year it was green peppers--that was a nice change.
- Jack: Danny is driving me crazy. He has to be the expert on everything. What's the matter with him?
- Kate Burroughs: He's very needy, that's all.
- Jack: Needy? He's hypochondriacal, stingy, bossy, selfish, compulsive, and paranoid. He's the Muhammad Ali of mental illness.
- Ginny: I think Danny's upset.
- Kate Burroughs: Oh, he'll be all right.
- Ginny: We've been joking around all night and he hasn't joined in. I think he's hurt. I think maybe we owe him an apology.
- Kate Burroughs: Why, because I laughed at him?
- Ginny: Well... yeah.
- Kate Burroughs: Look, Ginny, when people have been friends as long as we have, it's not such a terrible thing to kid somebody out of a depression. So don't get upset about what you don't understand.
- Ginny: [to the other couples] I've just about had it with you people!
- Nick: What's the matter?
- Ginny: I'll tell you what's the matter... I'm mad!
- [slight pause]
- Nick: [concerned] Ginny?
- Ginny: I fall in love with this man and all of a sudden in addition to him, I've got four constant companions! I have to work out a new relationship with somebody who is going through the worst period of his life, only I can't do it alone! I've got to do it in front of four other people! And it's not as if my privacy was invaded. You all let me know every single day that I have been intruding on your territory! Let me tell you something: As far as I'm concerned, you are all demanding and unforgiving... every single one of you. Everybody is sweet and warm and civil, but everybody ignores me! I'm like a leper! I'm... I'm a blank spot where Annie used to be."
- Danny: You think whenever your brain has a thought, it has to just drop down onto your tongue like a gumball.
- Nick: [to Jack, about Anne] She remembers the day she got her tooth filled. Christ, I can hardly remember the first time I got laid.
- Nick: [trying to get Lisa out of her depressed mood] You've made some friends at your dorm, right?
- Lisa: Not really. Most of the people I've met here have a peculiar idea of a good time.
- Nick: Like what?
- Lisa: They get drunk and piss off the balconies.
- Nick: [laughs] What about the girls?
- Lisa: I'm talking about the girls.
- Nick: You're kidding me, right?
- Lisa: I'm kidding you? You think it's a joke to have to walk home on a clear night with an umbrella?
- Nick: I don't understand. I've hurt you in some way?
- Jack: I happen to know you betrayed your wife dozens of times.
- Nick: If I did, that's what I did to her. What did I do to you?
- Jack: You didn't tell either of us.
- Nick: Hey, wait a minute. Let's take you one at a time. You can understand my not telling her, right?
- Jack: I can't understand you saying on the one hand that you could tell me anything. And on the other hand not telling me a goddamn thing except what suits you. I feel as betrayed as she does.
- Nick: Jack, all I've ever gotten from you is judgment and disapproval and you expect me to come and tell you every time I've had an affair with a hatcheck girl?
- Jack: That's who you were having affairs with? Hatcheck girls?
- Nick: No! They were all intelligent, worthy women. The top people in their field. I can't tell you all their names but two of them were Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi.
- Jack: When you wanna talk intelligently, I'll talk. Otherwise, forget it.
- Danny: [talking about Nick and Ginny] I don't find them all that adorable. They're making this trip very difficult.
- Jack: They're not even *on* this trip! They walk around mooning all the time, making goo-goo eyes - my God, if one of them farts, the other thinks it's Guy Lombardo!
- Claudia Zimmer: I think it's kind of nice.
- Jack: I don't know, I - I want us all to feel like we did before.
- Claudia Zimmer: I want to feel like them.
- Jack: [calmly, but icily] I'm sorry to have to tell you this.
- Kate Burroughs: What?
- Jack: You're making me angry.
- Kate Burroughs: You're angry? Right now?
- Jack: [again, calmly] I'm enraged.
- Kate Burroughs: How was I supposed to know? Maybe you can stamp your foot next time. Or try this.
- [shrieking]
- Kate Burroughs: WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
- Danny: [talking about Ginny] I think you should apologize to her.
- Claudia Zimmer: For what? I got excited, I spoke my mind, I said I was sorry, and it's over and done with.
- Danny: Well, I don't understand how you can hurt someone as guileless and vulnerable as Ginny.
- Claudia Zimmer: She sure took on a lot of mystical qualities once you saw her swimming naked.
- Danny: How can you say that?
- Claudia Zimmer: I just say what I think.
- Danny: Well, maybe that's the problem! Why do you always say what you think? I mean, do you think your thoughts should just fall down from your brain onto your tongue like a gumball machine?
- Claudia Zimmer: Danny, I'm not going to start watching what I think or what I feel! I'm Italian!
- Danny: [angry] I know you're Italian! I don't want to hear anymore how you're Italian! Wait, wait here. Wait, wait, wait, wait!
- [opens window and sticks his head out]
- Danny: Hello, out there! This woman is Italian!
- [faces back to Claudia]
- Danny: Alright! You no longer have to announce your ethnic origin in this state. Everybody in Connecticut knows you're Italian! And when we cross the border, I'll take out an ad in the New York Times.
- Ginny: [about Anne] You know, I don't want to talk her down, but she is unreliable. I mean Nick has made three appointments to meet her down at his lawyer's office and she's never shown up. She hasn't even called.
- Claudia Zimmer: Now wait a minute. No offense, Ginny, but 21 years ago Nick said he would be there on the other side of the bed every morning and for the last six months he hasn't kept his appointment either!
- Jack: [flustered] OK, look. All right, all right. Let's calm down. It's not all that bad. It's just a little embarassing.
- Nick: I don't see what the big problem is. We're all adults. We'll just say hello and uh...
- Danny: Have a nervous breakdown.
- Claudia Zimmer: [approaching Ginny] Ginny, I'm sorry. There is a lot of strain in the situation and I get passionate sometimes.
- Ginny: [crying and sniffling] That's OK. I know you're just trying to be fair to everybody.
- [Ginny walks away]
- Claudia Zimmer: [to Nick] You're the one I wanted to make cry.
- [Nick goes after Ginny]
- Danny: [to Claudia] Well, you had to open up your mouth again.
- Claudia Zimmer: Danny, it's over and done with, please.
- Danny: Let's have a nice quiet time... a nice vacation.
- Danny: Let me tell you something, Jack, I'm 10 years older than you, right?
- Jack: Yeah.
- Danny: All right, I just hope that when you get to be my age, you don't smell the foul breath of death and disintegration hanging over your shoulder the way I find it hanging over mine. I mean, I go to sleep at night on an ache so bad that it simply will not go away. I wake up in the middle of the night sweating, hearing my own bones decay. I have shifted into a state of entropy that's progressing geometrically.
- Jack: You see. Entropy. Progressing geometrically. You talk like a bad textbook. Why don't you just speak English?
- [changing her mind about hiding her new snake from her ex-husband]
- Anne Callan: I'll tell you what: to hell with Nick. Tell him it's a goddamn boa-constrictor.
- Ginny: [the friends are making lunch in cramped quarters on the boat] Salt is bad for you?
- Danny: I haven't used salt or mucus products for three years and I feel just great.
- Ginny: Who eats mucus?
- Claudia Zimmer: [disgusted] He means cheese and milk. Danny, say what you mean, would you please? You're talking to humans here!
- Ginny: Don't worry about it, Danny. This recipe doesn't call for mucus.
- Jack: Why do you think we love this boat so much?
- Kate Burroughs: I don't know.
- Jack: You know why I think we like this boat so much?
- Kate Burroughs: I knew it! I knew it. He only asked us so that he could tell us his theory. Go ahead. Go ahead, sweetheart. Tell us. Why do we love this boat so much?
- Jack: Because it represents our primeval desire to control water.
- Kate Burroughs: See.
- Jack: Now, think about it. All our beginnings are wet. Sloshing around in the womb. Baptism. The first life that came out of the warm soup of the ocean. From the moment we rose from the slime as alligators, we've been trying for dominion over water. You know?
- Kate Burroughs: Jack loves ideas. And he can do so much with them. I have seen him take one idea at a dinner party and bring the conversation of a dozen people to a complete halt.
- Nick: Ladies and gentlemen, Clams Casino.
- Claudia Zimmer: Oh, my God, I love them! I have this insatiable need to have dominance over the clams.
- Jack: It so happens that Venus rose from the sea on a clam shell. Sexuality was born in wetness.
- Danny: It's easier that way!
- Claudia Zimmer: Danny, how come you're allowed to have all these psychosomatic illnesses but when I throw up into my tote bag at two in the morning, it's just my imagination?
- Danny: Why do you always have to do that? Why couldn't you have just kept quiet?
- Claudia Zimmer: Danny, I say what I feel. I'm Italian!
- Danny: [outraged] I know you're Italian! I know you're Italian!
- [opens the window and shouts]
- Danny: This woman is Italian!
- [faces away from window]
- Danny: You no longer have to announce your ethnic origin in this state. Everyone in Connecticut knows that you're Italian!
- Jack: You handle everything like three of the most efficient people I know. Uh, nobody can do what you do. My God, you're perfect!
- Kate Burroughs: How dare you call me that?
- Jack: How dare I call you perfect?
- Kate Burroughs: Yes. Yes, isn't that what I heard?
- Nick: She might fall down! I can't let Ginny just wander around in the snow like that.
- Jack: Why not?
- Nick: Because she's pregnant.
- Jack: Pregnant? You're 43 years old! You're gonna start having babies now?
- Nick: Oh, there's some real heartwarming acceptance. I have to check everything with you? As a matter of fact, I told you I wanted to start a new family.
- Jack: With babies?
- Nick: What, with Airedales?
- Kate Burroughs: [pretending to speak to an eavesdropping Danny outside hotel room door] Danny dear, please don't take this the wrong way, you know how fond I am of you, but I think your Mercedes sucks!
- Claudia Zimmer: [after Jack has exploded and thrown the the moose head into the fireplace] I wonder what other people do on their vacations?
- Claudia Zimmer: Is he still thoughtful?
- Kate Burroughs: [hugging Jack] Yes, Jack is thoughtful.
- Claudia Zimmer: Does he observe good bathroom etiquette?
- Kate Burroughs: Huh?
- Claudia Zimmer: Does he leave the seat up or does he put it down?
- Danny: Wait a minute! I always put the seat down!
- Claudia Zimmer: Yeah, after I yelled at you to do it!
- Danny: We owe the length, breadth, and depth of this relationship to the two most basic human emotions... fear and panic.
- Kate Burroughs: Danny, calm down!
- Danny: Please don't tell me to calm down, this is the second time today someone has told me to calm down!
- Kate Burroughs: Well, I'm sorry. It's only my first.
- Jack: [toast to Nick and Anne] To the reason we're here tonight. Not just to celebrate your anniversary, but to that deeper thing that brings us all close together. To what bonds us, and... and makes us huddle against the cold winds of divorce that have blown through the lives of our friends.
- Danny: You brought your work? I stopped my work for the weekend.
- Claudia Zimmer: Danny, please. You're a dentist.
- Danny: Do you hear this? I can sculpt a bicuspid that would fool God himself, but I'm just a dentist.
- Anne Callan: No, don't do that. That's for tomorrow.
- Kate Burroughs: Well, for him there's no tomorrow.
- Danny: You know, beans are very much misunderstood. They have a complex set of amino acids. If you eat beans together with rice, you never have to eat meat.
- Claudia Zimmer: Danny loves to talk about beans.
- Nick: Hey, hey. Listen to the water lapping against the sides of the boat. To be with friends sipping wine, this is what it is to be happy.
- Kate Burroughs: This - and being incredibly rich.