- Irving Cohen: I never should have left the lingerie business. I was the happiest man in women's underwear.
- Rocky: [after hearing an actor in a movie he's watching say "I love you"] You've been tellin' her for two hours ya creep!
- Benny: A prison cell is quieter. A grave has no sound at all. But, I'm just a two-cent seltzer schlepper, what do I know?
- Irving Cohen: [During an especially gentle sparring match so Rocky could impress his girlfriend] Turn around.
- Rocky: What's the matter?
- Irving Cohen: I just wanted to make sure he didn't smear your lipstick.
- Rocky: Come on, come on.
- Irving Cohen: Is that the way you're gonna fight in the arena tonight?
- Rocky: [In prison] Don't worry about me, ma. I'm gonna have this joint licked in no time.
- Ma Barbella: Well, aren't you goin' to ask me why I haven't come to see you in six months. Why don't you ask me where I've been? County Hospital. That's where. Tied to a bed. Electric shock treatments. Tryin' to save me from goin' out of my mind.
- Rocky: Ma!
- Ma Barbella: You, Rocky. You're the one who keeps me up all night with worry.so as I can't sleep. I'm goin' out of my mind. I can't go on..
- Rocky: Ma, cut it out, will you? Stop it!
- Ma Barbella: I'm through, Rocky. I can't fight your fights. I can't raise my hand for you no more.
- Rocky: Who've you been talkin' to... the priest?
- Ma Barbella: What am I going to do with you, Rocky?
- Rocky: Don't worry, huh? Just don't worry.
- Ma Barbella: That's all you ever say is "Don't worry." You think I talked to that priest? Yeah, I talked to the father and he told me I'm doin' the right thing. He said nobody can help you, Rocky, but you, yourself. That's what the father said to me. Maybe you think I'm hard-hearted, your own mother, but what I'm going to do is the only thing I can think of.
- Rocky: Going... going to do what?
- Ma Barbella: I am the last person on earth who cares whether you live or die or rot in jail, but if you turn your back on me and go back to that scum you call friends, I turn my back on you. You are no longer my son.
- Rocky: Ma, I tried to turn the leaf but I can't make it. It's something inside me. I try but I can't make it.
- Ma Barbella: I pray to God you try because if you don't, I'll be through with you and I don't want to be through with you, but I don't know what else to do,.
- Rocky: Look, ma. Just don't worry, huh. Don't worry about a thing.
- Ma Barbella: [Gets up to leave] Don't worry about a thing. Don't worry about a thing.
- Benny: The whole world is not so different from my candy store. Someone comes in, sits down in the fountain, asks for a soda. I give him a soda. He drinks the soda. I give him a check. He's got to pay for it! It's the same out there. He who wants a soda must be willing to pay the check. You do something wrong, Rocky, you got to pay the check. It's a very simple truth, yet some men find it difficult to understand. They get angry when time for payment comes. "Who me?" they cry. "For what?" For the soda. That's for what, Rocky. Never ask for a soda unless you are prepared to pay the check.
- Norma: [Angrily] What do you do to feel important?
- Rocky: You wanna know? Come and see me fight sometime.
- Norma: I told you "no."
- Rocky: Well, that's what makes me feel important. I mean, you gotta be there. You got to hear them crowds screamin'. They're screamin' my name. And they're screamin' for me to kill off the other guy. They grab at me when I go up the aisle. That's what makes me feel important.
- Norma: I can't stand seeing people hurt, especially you. All that blood.
- Rocky: Well, look. At least you can come to the gym and see me train sometime. Just train.
- Norma: I won't have to see men hurting each other?
- Rocky: Scout's honor.
- Johnny Hyland: I don't think you would ever show any real style like some of my boys, but you'd probaby lick 'em all. You'd lick 'em all because you got something inside of you that a lot of fighters don't have. Never will have, no matter how much I teach them. Hate. I don't know why it's there. I only know if anybody hits you, he'd better start ducking fast because that hate pours into that right hand of yours and makes it like a charge of dynamite.
- Rocky: Alright look, Sergeant. All my life I've been fightin' and all my life I've been gettin' in trouble from it. I don't want no more trouble. Just leave me alone, will ya? I mean, I... I don't want to fight. With gloves, without gloves, I just don't wanna fight, ok?
- Yolanda Barbella: [after hearing on the radio that Rocky loses a major middleweight champion fight] Norma, he'll be all right.
- Norma: Sure he will. He's hard and tough. He can take anything. But I can't.
- Yolanda Barbella: He had to lose sometime.
- Norma: It isn't whether he loses or wins. All he has to do is step into that ring and I'd like to run and hide, knowing maybe they'll hurt him, cripple him.
- Ma Barbella: Did you ever tell this to Rocky? Did you ever ask him to stop fighting?
- Norma: It's his whole life, everything he's got.
- Ma Barbella: Then it's your whole life too. Don't ever make the mistake of forgetting that like I did.
- Norma: That's right. I didn't marry a man, did I? I married a middleweight.
- Rocky: Hey, don't cry, will ya? Look, pa, I was just talkin'. Aw, you don't have to take everything I say. Aw, hey look. I ain't so tough. You wanna hit me? Come on, hit me, will ya? Look, pa. I was just talkin'. I mean, you couldn't help yourself. You had nothin' but bad breaks. Me? I've been lucky. Come on. What could I do for you, huh? Let me do somethin' for you.
- Nick Barbella: Be a champ. Like I never was.
- Romolo: Got big plans, Rocky. Goin' into business for myself. Gonna buy me a flower stand. You wanna... you wanna invest?.
- Rocky: Oh, yeah. How much?
- Romolo: A hundred?
- Rocky: What? A flower stand for only a hundred bucks?
- Romolo: Nah, there's this warehouse over on Avenue "A" with an old grandpop of a night watchman. With a C-note I think maybe I can buy me a heater, pay some slob to point it at the old guy while I make a score inside. Then I'll have enough dough to get me the flower stand.
- Rocky: Romolo, you gotta get off this kick. You're gonna wind up with a bullet in your head.
- Romolo: What are ya talkin' about?
- Rocky: Well, it... it ain't worth it, don't you understand? You can't make any real dough sellin' flowers.
- Romolo: So who's gonna sell flowers? That's just the front, Rocky. I'm gonna have me the prettiest, the sweetest smellin' bookie joint in the East side. All I need is a heater and a slob to point it..
- Rocky: I don't wanna lose you, can't you understand that. You're gonna get killed if you don't wise up and turn a leaf, you pathetic little jerk!
- Romolo: What's the use of turnin' the leaf? Look at you. You tried it, didn't you? They wouldn't let you get away with it. We ain't got a chance guys like us, do we? Do we, Rocky?.
- Rocky: [Reluctantly gives him the money] Here.
- Norma: He has got a past, you know, and it's time he learned to live with it. And it's time you and I stopped looking the other way every time he gets mad at the world for the trouble he gets into. It was Rocky who broke the regulation -- not the Commissioner, not the District Attorney. To listen to him you'd think he was just an innocent bystander.
- Irving Cohen: Please, Norma. I thought you were gonna help us. I thought you wanted Rocky to win the fight.
- Norma: Alright. So what about all the fights after that one? What about me this time after he has to give up fighting?
- Irving Cohen: But, Norma...
- Norma: I'm his wife, not his manager. I'm gonna be living with him long after you've stopped worrying about his weight and his footwork and whether or not he's getting his sleep.
- Benny: [to Rocky] The trouble with reading the phone book is you always know how it will come out in the end - Zabisky.
- Rocky: Hundreds of them, thousands of them marching around in circles. Not one lousy face that I know. Not from the East Side, not from any can I ever been in. Not from nowhere! Never seen so many square creeps!
- Irving Cohen: See if you can dig me up a sparring partner real fast. There must be someone around who needs a sawbuck.
- Rocky: Wait a minute. Aren't you even going to take a shower?
- Irving Cohen: That's okay, Mr. Cohen. It's raining out.
- Lou Stillman: Who are you looking for?
- Rocky: Peppo. Frankie Peppo. Just tell me how to find him.
- Lou Stillman: Sure, I'll tell you how to find Peppo. You take a subway down to Grand Central Station and then you take the train to Sing Sing. But don't hurry; because, you got 2 to 10 years to get there. And when you do find Peppo, tell him to stay away from here. I'm not runnin' a social hall for thieves.
- Rocky: What is this talk about rules and trainin' and stuff? I mean, why don't you put me someplace where I can fight them Hitler soldiers. Let's get it over with! We ain't gonna win the war hangin' around this crummy camp.
- Rocky: What did you do? What did you say to her?
- Lou Stillman: Well, nothin'. I just asked her why a nice Jewish girl like her was interested in a hungry, no-good, East Side, trouble fighter like you.
- Norma: The Judge won't wait there all day, Rocky.
- Rocky: You brung the license, huh?
- Norma: I have it right here in my bag.
- Rocky: I thought maybe you forgot it.
- Norma: No, I didn't forget it.
- Rocky: Hey, I ain't got enough dough to pay de Judge.
- Norma: I have.
- Rocky: Where'd you get it?
- Norma: I pawned my Star of David.
- Norma: I'll never like fighting! And I never will! It's all meanness and blood and ignorance.
- Rocky: All right! All right! Maybe it is all meanness and blood and ignorance. And maybe a lot of guys end up with their brains rattled. But, where else can a guy like me be somethin' - if it ain't in the fightin' business? Look, I never had nothin'. I mean nothin'! Till I gotta chance to make some clean in the ring. What's better, huh? Stealin', starvin', or fightin'? Oh, please, Norma, now you gotta understand this.
- Irving Cohen: For six months, I can't get him to train. And then on the day of a fight, when he should be resting, he trains. He's a meshugana.
- Lou Stillman: Let's you and me take a walk around. Let's you and me have a little talk about the pugilistic profession.
- Rocky: I'm gonna get some ice cream.
- Ma Barbella: And maybe stand on the street corner taking bows from the whole neighborhood, Mr. Jack Dempsey?
- Rocky: Oh, how many times I gotta tell ya, Dempsey's a heavyweight.
- Ma Barbella: Heavyweight. Middleweight. As long as they can't put you in jail for it.
- Irving Cohen: What am I gonna do with him?
- Norma: You're gonna take him to Chicago and get him back into shape. Then he's gonna take the title away from Tony Zale and show everybody who he is and what he is.
- Irving Cohen: It's Chicago. You heard him.
- Norma: It isn't Chicago! He's got no stomach for fighting anywhere. Don't you see, Irving? For three years, he sweated hard, the only way he knew, trying to become a member of what he calls the legit world. He thought he had made it. But, now he's convinced whatever he tried didn't work and can't work and what's the use of trying anymore if you're no good and never will be? But it did work, Irving, and it's got to work again! It's got to!
- Rocky: Oh, no. I ain't gonna fight in no Chicago ring. They hate me there! The newspapers, the people. That's where some rat blew the whistle on me. Look. Now, why have I gotta fight in a foreign city were I ain't got no friends? They don't want me to win there! I gotta tell you that?