- Paisley Porter: I didn't understand until today how much pain and anxiety you've been causing everybody with your reviews. Steven, it's completely unfair.
- Steven Schwimmer: It's unfair?
- Paisley Porter: Yes.
- Steven Schwimmer: The truth is always unfair.
- Paisley Porter: Well, it doesn't have to be.
- Steven Schwimmer: Why do you think I live this way? Why do you think I'm, I'm taking electricity from the lamp-post
- [he gestures outdoors]
- Steven Schwimmer: and hiding out? Why?
- Paisley Porter: Because you choose to.
- Steven Schwimmer: No. Because people who write the truth are the outcasts of society. I can't live openly. I can't live in a nice door-man building, with my name on the mailbox, because they'd, they'd come after me in packs!
- Paisley Porter: Not if you wrote the truth gently.
- Steven Schwimmer: [in an upset tone] But the truth is never gentle.
- Anatoli Kaganovich: I opened thousands of brains.
- Nicky Rogan: What'd you find?
- Anatoli Kaganovich: Big mess every time.
- [Nicky Rogan, in a taxi cab, sees his daughter in an adjacent taxi, exits his, and joins her in hers]
- Nicky Rogan: How come I don't see you any more? Where are you, all day?
- Laurel Rogan: [laughs sardonically] I'm at college. Thought you knew.
- Nicky Rogan: You wanna get a coffee?
- Laurel Rogan: I don't drink coffee, Daddy. This is not what we should be talking about.
- Nicky Rogan: What do you want to talk about? I'll talk about anything you want to talk about. What's this?
- [He picks up her radio]
- Laurel Rogan: Senior Play tonight, remember?
- Nicky Rogan: Why do you need a radio?
- Laurel Rogan: So I can listen to the ball game at intermissions! Do you know that Mother is seeing a prominent divorce lawyer?
- Nicky Rogan: Don't talk like that! Man! How prominent? What are you implying?
- Laurel Rogan: She's doing like those Iranians. I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee.
- Laurel Rogan: [to her father] You know what Mother said to me? That Daddy's demons are so intense, he doesn't even know when he's lying.
- Nicky Rogan: I don't get it. What's the fuss?
- Elliott Litvak: He reviewed that one-act I did at the Fulton Fish Market. We did this play at four in the morning. Outdoors. In the rain. One performance. For fish handlers.
- Nicky Rogan: And he was there?
- Elliott Litvak: Steven Schwimmer. I memorized every line of this review.
- Nicky Rogan: That's awful.
- Elliott Litvak: I recite it to myself with masochistic relish.
- Elliott Litvak: I can't write one word without imagining what his response is going to be. I am paralyzed as an artist.
- Nicky Rogan: See, I don't have the problems you artists have.
- Elliott Litvak: You've been saying that for years.
- Nicky Rogan: What?
- Elliott Litvak: "No, I'm just a professional. I'm a dues-paying member of the Guild." You are afraid, Nicky. That's the darkest part of you.
- Nicky Rogan: When the Mets lose, they just lose. It's a flat feeling; there's nothing there. Now the Red Sox, now, here, we have a rich history of really fascinating ways to lose a crucial game. You know what I mean? Defeats that just keep you awake at night. They pound in your head like the hammer of fate. Yeah, you can analyze a Red Sox game day and night for a month and still uncover really complex layers of feelings. Feelings you didn't even know you were capable of having. Yeah. That kind of pain has a memory all of its own.
- Joanna Bourne: [to Nicky] I just can't take it any more. He forgets simple lines, he forgets where to stand, and we tell him and we tell him and we tell him. I know he's a sweet man; I love Peter; I know it's not his fault. But I have never worked on a show where the leading man has a parasite in his brain.
- Paisley Porter: [describing theater critic Steven Schwimmer to Nicky:] Steven not only wears disguises. He goes to the theater armed.
- Lillian Rogan: I want to be fair-minded, Nicky.
- Nicky Rogan: [taking his attention away from the ball game on the pub's television] All right. All right. Okay. What's going on?
- Lillian Rogan: I've been talking to a prominent divorce lawyer.
- Nicky Rogan: [very seriously] How prominent?
- Lillian Rogan: He has his own submarine.
- [Toyota has mistaken Nicky for a murderous gangster, but because he speaks quietly, she speaks fearlessly]
- Toyota Moseby: Your problem is, you want to take the easy way out. Losing is easy.
- Nicky Rogan: No. Winning is easy. Losing is complicated. Losing's a lifetime's work.
- [They are watching the baseball game in a pub]
- Toyota Moseby: Life is good!
- Nicky Rogan: Baseball is life!
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