- Dr. John Carpenter: [after she reveals herself to be a nun, Dr. Carpenter is shocked] You've got to be kiddin'.
- Dr. John Carpenter: I'm a member of the Order of the Little Sisters of Mary. We were only going to be here for two months. John, please say something.
- Dr. John Carpenter: I'll be damned.
- Sister Irene: I think our neighbours are Catholic.
- Sister Michelle: Yes, it's too bad they're not Christian.
- Dr. John Carpenter: You got to learn to start loving people. I'm gonna hold you till you get rid of all your hate. Get as mad as you can. Then you can start to give love and take love. Try to get away from me, baby. Try and get away.
- Sister Michelle: You certainly have a way with a compliment, doctor.
- Dr. John Carpenter: It's Southern charm, we call it.
- Sister Irene: I have used my vocation to get away from all the things I've ever known. Doctor, do you know what it is to be really poor? I mean, hungry? Frightened? To be black?
- Dr. John Carpenter: I've been all those things except black.
- Sister Michelle: You're the doctor?
- Sister Barbara: You don't look like a doctor.
- Dr. John Carpenter: Well, man doesn't live by bread alone, especially the kind of bread you make in a free clinic. John Carpenter, M.D.
- Sister Michelle: Don't you see, we can't be identified with the old order. If we're gonna reach these people, we've got be accepted first as women, then as nuns.
- Sister Irene: Yeah, well, I think we're about to be accepted as women.
- Sister Michelle: Doctor, we were sent here by the Catholic Action Committee.
- Dr. John Carpenter: Look, don't try to con me, honey.
- Sister Michelle: We were given to understand that you were desperately in need of nurses.
- Dr. John Carpenter: Well, that's my problem. It's got nothing to do with you chicks.
- Sister Michelle: We are the nurses they sent!
- Dr. John Carpenter: Great. Just great. I ask for three hard-nosed nurses and they send me Park Avenue debutantes.
- Sister Irene: Which end of Park Avenue do you figure I'm from, Doctor?
- Dr. John Carpenter: The last three nurses who worked here couldn't take it. Two of them got raped. One even against her will.
- Sister Michelle: We are very hard-nosed. Cute. But not hard enough.
- Dr. John Carpenter: [touches Michelle's nose] Cute. But not hard enough.
- Dr. John Carpenter: Which one of you is in trouble?
- Sister Michelle: I beg your pardon?
- Dr. John Carpenter: Look, I know the whole story. You don't want to go to your family doctor uptown, so you figure you'd come here and get everything straightened out, right?
- Sister Michelle: We were sent here.
- Dr. John Carpenter: You came to the wrong place. 'Cause I won't do any more for you than I would any other kid who finds herself in the same fix. Whichever one of you is the lucky girl, follow me. I'll give you some vitamin pills and a diet sheet. Just try not to gain too much weight, especially in the first three months. All three of you? Uh, just out of curiosity, was it the same guy?
- Sister Michelle: I think she's autistic.
- Amanda: Artistic? Nah. She don't even lift up a crayon.
- Sister Michelle: No. Autistic. Sometimes, when a child's rejected very early in life, they crawl inside themselves and shut out the whole world as if they're trying to punish the rest of us along with themselves.
- Dr. John Carpenter: We celebrate by having a drink.
- Sister Michelle: Oh, we don't drink.
- Dr. John Carpenter: We don't drink?
- Sister Michelle: Well, uh, what I mean is - a little wine, occasionally.
- Sister Irene: Do you think there'll be trouble?
- Dr. John Carpenter: Trouble?
- Sister Irene: At the fiesta?
- Dr. John Carpenter: You know how it is on a Saturday night down here. You get everybody together, blown out their skulls, and all the old hates come out. And you just may wind up with World War III on your hands.
- Sister Barbara: Ah, Sisters, why don't you go on to the Clinic without me. Please tell Dr. Carpenter I'll be there as soon as I can. I have a rendezvous with destiny at the Ajax Market.
- Sister Michelle: Sister Barbara!
- Sister Barbara: I know, order and discipline, Well, I'm being wilfully disobedient.
- Sister Irene: That is called doing your own thing.
- The Banker: Lucky for you you're wearing that gunny sack, dinge.
- Sister Irene: Well, don't let that stop you.
- The Banker: You keep talkin', it won't.
- Sister Irene: Go ahead. Beat up a Nun!
- Dr. John Carpenter: [singing] Stop, look and listen, baby, That's my philosophy, It's called rubberneckin', baby, But that's all right with me. Some people say I'm wastin' time, They don't really know, I like what I see, I see what I like, yeah, Give me such a oh, hey, hey, hey...
- Sister Irene: I must have said a million Hail Marys to get out of a neighborhood just like this. I suddenly realize how safe I felt in my habit.
- Sister Michelle: We argued that out before. It's just a symbol of authority, like a policeman's uniform.
- Sister Irene: Yeah, well, you never see a policeman getting mugged.
- Sister Michelle: We're gonna live the way other people live and dress the way they do. For once in our religious lives, we're not going to be different.
- Sister Irene: There's a lot to be said for being different.
- Father Gibbons: I don't like underground nuns who wear bobbed hair and silk stockings.
- Sister Barbara: Oh, but they're nylon, Father.
- Sister Michelle: We're not what you think we are.
- Rose: Sure, and they're calling themselves "massosies" now. I read it in the Enquirer.
- Lily: We don't want any monkey business around here, I'm warning ya. We have friends at the precinct.
- Sister Michelle: Well, we want to be friends too.
- Rose: Call Father Gibbons. He'll want to know what's coming into his parish now. And tell him one of em's black as the ace of spades!
- Father Gibbons: Flapper skirts on a bride of Christ. I've been ordered by the bishop to countenance. But I warn you, Sister, I'll have none of your arrogant lip!
- Sister Barbara: Thank you very much, sir.
- Lily: A girl with a shape like yours can do better than two-bit winos.
- Desiree: Oh, Doc. I have such a pain in my left chest.
- Dr. John Carpenter: Your left chest? Now wait a minute.
- Desiree: Mm-hmm. A construction.
- Dr. John Carpenter: A what?
- Desiree: A construction. I swear it on my mother's grave.
- Dr. John Carpenter: Your mother's alive!
- Desiree: So, it could be something serious. All right. I better not take any chances. There? Um... yeah, right here.
- Dr. John Carpenter: All right. I better not take any chances.
- [places the stethoscope on her upper chest]
- Dr. John Carpenter: There?
- Desiree: [moves it lower] Um, yeah, right here.
- Sister Barbara: If you don't like my noodle ring, you should have accepted Dr. Carpenter's invitation to dinner. I would have.
- Sister Michelle: That'll be five 'Hail Marys'.
- Sister Irene: Nuns and men don't mix.
- Sister Barbara: Oh, I think he's cute.
- Sister Irene: Fifteen.
- Sister Barbara: Honest. He's groovy.
- Sister Irene, Sister Michelle: Twenty-five.
- Sister Barbara: Tell me, as a doctor would you diagnose what's happening today, the riots, the student unrest, as not really the death throes of an old order but the birth pains of a new one?
- Dr. John Carpenter: I didn't know I was making a house call.
- Sister Barbara: Oh, well, I mean, don't we all, each in our own way, have to man the barricades?
- Dr. John Carpenter: At the Ajax Market?
- Dr. John Carpenter: If you really want to get to know some of the kids around here, why don't you come down to the park on a Saturday afternoon when we play touch football?
- Dr. John Carpenter: What do you know? We're finally alone.
- [moves closer]
- Sister Michelle: John, uh, please don't.
- Sister Michelle: I get the feeling there's a message here. Like maybe there's somebody else?
- Sister Michelle: You - could say that, yes.
- Sister Barbara: Well, me for the sack.
- Sister Michelle: And me for the sack cloth and the ashes.
- Sister Barbara: Church?
- Sister Michelle: I've got to talk to somebody.
- Sister Barbara: Oh, you're not going all the way uptown to the convent at this hour.
- Sister Michelle: No. We have a church right here in the neighborhood.
- Sister Barbara: Father Gibbons? He will burn you at the stake.
- Sister Michelle: Ah, not exactly an apostle of the Ecumenical Movement.
- Sister Barbara: Ah, no. More The Inquisition.
- Sister Michelle: But still a Priest.
- Sister Michelle: Father, we've done nothing to be ashamed of.
- Father Gibbons: Men in your rooms. Late parties. Profane music until all hours. Forsaking the habit was one thing, but now you're not even dressed like females.
- Dr. John Carpenter: Irene, it's not my place to tell anybody when to fish or cut bait. But let's hope it doesn't turn out to be fish or get your throat cut.
- Mother Joseph: I realize it was a great risk sending them out to mix with the world. And not have them mixed up by it.
- Bishop Finley: Inexperienced people who get emotionally involved can often do more harm than good. Among our first lessons is the importance of order, discipline.
- Father Gibbons: Not license and wantonness!
- Lt. Moretti: A law officer should always remember to keep his own good humor even in the face of vituperative comment and obscenity.
- Lt. Moretti: Dirty Establishment Fink!
- Colom: There's no room down here for innocent bystanders. You're either part of the problem or you're part of the solution.
- Sister Irene: Don't talk to me about being black. I've been black all my life. So I don't want to hear that.
- Miss Parker: Everything but the soul. You copped out.
- Sister Irene: I never have. I've done my part!
- Colom: For you. Not for us. See, you're locked in with those ofay chicks. Well, you can't have it both ways.
- Miss Parker: Get it together or get out. You're too pretty not to stay pretty.
- Sister Michelle: It's from Barbara. What's an 'infrastructural sphere of mechanistic behaviorism'? Do you think she's a Communist?
- Hawk: Nobody sent for the fuzz, man.
- Lt. Moretti: We're just naturally interested in any kind of trouble.
- Robbie: There ain't no trouble here, man.
- Sister Irene: When little white girls were playing with dolls and wearing party dresses, I was dodging drunks in dark hallways, praying I could get away from the stench of the ghetto. So I could be somebody, not - not 'just another nigger in the streets.