- Bill Tenny: What do they got against the Jews? Back home we don't have anything against the Jews. Hell I never even saw a Jew until I was fifteen.
- Mary Treadwell: Maybe you were too busy lynching negros to take time out for the Jews.
- Bill Tenny: I was in Vercaruz trying to teach them greasers to play ball. Man, they tried to poison me. You know, I had the runs for three weeks.
- Mary Treadwell: How interesting. I'd like to hear more about it.
- Lowenthal: How old are you?
- Elsa: Sixteen.
- Lowenthal: Adolescence. What is adolescence? Adolescence is a time when people worry about things there's no need to worry about. Sixteen... I promise you, at seventeen you will be even more charming than you are now. At twenty-one, you will be gorgeous. And at twenty-five... devastating! And I won't stand any arguments!
- Freytag: Doesn't it bother you that you and that little man are the only two Germans not at the Captain's Table?
- Lowenthal: Do you think that bothers me? Besides, I like that little man; what kind of salesman do you think I would be if I couldn't deal with a situation like that? A salesman is supposed to deal a difficult situation and overcome it. Listen, it's not a new story: white men hate black men, Muslims hate Buddhists-that's the way it goes. There's prejudice everywhere. It does no good to give it back. You have got to use your noogin'.
- Lowenthal: Listen to that music, Glocken. Don't try to tell me you don't react to that music.
- Glocken: Schmulz.
- Lowenthal: Hmph, tell me, Glocken, now honestly, when you hear that music, wherever you are, don't you have a special feeling about being a German?
- Glocken: I'll tell you, Leaven's honor, honestly, when I hear that music, wherever I am, I have a special feeling about being a dwarf.
- Lowenthal: Ah, I remember being thousands of miles from home in a movie theater in New York; they put on a picture of the funeral of the Kaiserin Victoria. That good woman, how much she meant to all of us.
- Glocken: [rolls eyes] You are German, aren't you? You are the most German person I have ever met.
- Lowenthal: [chuckles] Oh, I want to show you something. I take it out every once in a while and look at it when I want to feel good.
- Glocken: Well, the order of the Iron Cross, second class - and a war hero besides. You may be the biggest fool on this whole boat.
- Lowenthal: [looks offended] Why do you say that?
- Glocken: [says agitated] Where have you been during this voyage?
- Lowenthal: Do you think this boat is a cross-section of the German people? Huh, no. You don't know the average German the way I know him. The people that produced a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Bach are not to be sneezed at, you know.
- Glocken: Fifty percent of the people who produced a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Bach voted for Rieber's party last week!
- Lowenthal: [grumbles disagreed] Forty-four percent.
- Glocken: Lowenthal, you are blind; you're absolutely blind! You can't see what's going on in front of your own face.
- Lowenthal: What do you mean? Ah, you mean this business about the Jews? You don't understand us. The German-Jew is something special. We are Germans first and Jews second. We have done so much for Germany; Germany has done so much for us. A little patience, a little good will; it works itself out.
- [scoffs endearingly]
- Lowenthal: Huh, listen, there are nearly a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us?
- Glocken: [looks frightened]
- Lowenthal: You are sure, you are not Jewish?
- Glocken: [makes iffy hand gesture] Reasonably sure.
- Lowenthal: You resemble a brother-in-law of mine in Stuttgart.
- Glocken: [chuckles] That's the way it is, people are always mistaking me for someone else.
- [both chuckle at the humor due to his unique appearance]
- [first lines]
- Glocken: [walks up to the ship's railing] My name is Karl Glocken, and this is a ship of fools. I'm a fool, and you'll meet more fools as we go along. This tub is packed with them: emancipated ladies, ball players, lovers, dog lovers, ladies of joy, tolerant Jews, dwarfs - all kinds. And who knows, if you look closely enough, you may even find yourself on board.
- Mary Treadwell: Everybody on this ship is in love. Love me whether or not I love you. Love me whether I am fit to love. Love me whether I am able to love. Even if there is no such thing as love. Love me.
- Bill Tenny: [Drunk] You know what I think?
- Glocken: No.
- Bill Tenny: I think you're a sawed-off intellectual.
- Jenny Brown: David's an artist. A wonderful one. He's caught up with social conscience right now, but he'll get over that.
- Mary Treadwell: Is it serious?
- Jenny Brown: I never felt about anybody the way I do about David. Only that David thinks a woman should follow three paces behind - with slippers.
- Mary Treadwell: Men usually do. My husband certainly did.
- Jenny Brown: I think I've been happiest when I was dancing... sometimes I wish that I'd tied a tape measure to my ankle when I danced all my life - then I could tell you how many miles I traveled when I was happiest.
- [last lines]
- Glocken: Oh I can just hear you saying - 'what has all this to do with us?'... Nothing.
- [chuckles and walks away off the boat]
- La Condesa: I'm sure you never have any problems sleeping.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: No, never.
- La Condesa: Tell me your secret.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: A clear conscience, of course.
- La Condesa: [sarcastically] That's a neat trick: having a clear conscience when you work as a doctor on a ship which has six hundred people living on an open deck.
- Bill Tenny: Hey, did I tell you what happened to me down in Veracruz? When I was comin' through immigration? Well, I'm standin' in line, you see. I see this clerk down there, and I holler out, "Hey, Pancho, get over here." Just bein' friendly like. Now, back home, we call a taxi driver "Mac" or a pullman porter "George". Well, this little nigger - now, you know these coast Mexicans got mostly nigger blood in them, I'm told - but he just looks up and stares at me. The next thing I know, everybody's goin' ahead of me in this line. Then, I realize, that this little nigger resented it.
- David: I think I'll turn in.
- Glocken: Me, too.
- Mary Treadwell: You are not young Mrs. Treadwell. You have not been young
- [strikes match]
- Mary Treadwell: for years.
- [lights cigarette]
- Mary Treadwell: Behind those old eyes, you hide a sixteen year old heart. Poor fool.
- [puts cigarette out]
- Mary Treadwell: Is that what men really find attractive?
- [tweaks hair and poorly applies makeup]
- Mary Treadwell: Baby, you just haven't managed to grow up, Mrs. Treadwell - of Murray Hill, Virginia.
- [puts down makeup]
- Mary Treadwell: Now,
- [spritzes on perfume]
- Mary Treadwell: you can paint your toenails gooey
- [looks distressed]
- Mary Treadwell: ... you know how it ends don't you - alone, sitting in a cafe, with a paid escort.
- [starts to cry]
- Bill Tenny: You don't know what its like to be out there and the crowd's yellin' for you to deliver. And they start talkin'. Pitchers they talk. "You can't hit a curve ball on the outside corner." And from then on out, that's all you see is curve balls on the outside corner. So, you've had your big chance. And you have muffed it. Now, I can still hear my old man yellin' at me from the stands, even though he wasn't there,"Big wheel, you are a bum! You are a bum just like me."
- Glocken: You know, I think you're being a bit harsh on yourself, Herr Tenny.
- Bill Tenny: A bum.
- Glocken: You know, I travel a lot. My folks give me some money, not much, but some. They are more comfortable when I'm not around, but you know what I find? I find the most amusing things about people are their guilts that they drum up for themselves. For instance, I estimate that there must be at least 873 million people in the world who don't even know what a curve ball on the outside corner is. So, I think it a bit excessive for you think that you have muffed your whole life just because you couldn't hit it! Paddle or no paddle.
- Lizzi Spoekenkieker: Do you know what they say in Mexico? Mexicans loathe the Americans, hate the Spaniards, distrust the English, admire the French, and love the Germans.
- Rieber: That is all very nice. I am glad they say those things, but, as far as I am concerned, after a few weeks in Mexico, you can keep the Mexicans too.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: What are you laughing at?
- La Condesa: My house has been burned, they have taken everything I had - now I am being taken to prison to an island I know nothing about, and you are giving me a Sunday School sermon.
- La Condesa: To think, isn't it wonderful: two strangers on a ship - we will never meet again. We can talk - we can talk like friends, or even lovers... we can talk like two people who meet on the other side of the grave.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Keep talking.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: [looks enchanted] You're so strange. Sometimes you're so bitter, then you're soft and warm like a child.
- La Condesa: [smiles plainly] I'm just a woman
- David: What's the matter?
- Jenny Brown: Twenty-six days in separate beds. It's probably a very good thing. We'll get to know each other. We'll find out whether we have anything going for us besides sex.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Who puts 600 people on a deck with only two outlets to wash?
- Lt. Huebner: Huh, you don't know them; they wouldn't wash if they could. You don't know what pigs they are.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: The deck is to be cleaned. Bring the hoses out.
- Lt. Huebner: The hoses?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Bring the hoses out, I said!
- Lt. Huebner: I cannot turn the hoses on them.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: It's better to turn the hoses on them than for them live this way, no?
- Bill Tenny: What's the matter? Don't you make any money paintin'?
- David: No.
- Bill Tenny: Oh, now wait a minute. Come on, wait a minute. You mean to tell me that you work at somethin' that you can't make a livin' off, so you got to take a job to make enough money to go on workin' at the work you can't live on?
- Glocken: But that is the heroic life. That is the way men who trust themselves can afford to live.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: I wonder if it's true, that life is as stupid and meaningless as it seems to be on this ship.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: You just can't take pills every time you can't sleep or any time you want to be stimulated or sedated.
- Glocken: I am sorry. I don't mean to pry. You know, the distasteful curiosity of the nonparticipant.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: When I had my heart attack, there was a dream I had. You can talk about death - I've seen it many times as a doctor - but you never know what it's like until it happens to you... I dreamt I had already died. I dreamt I was in a box with sweat broke out all over my body. I wanted to cry out 'I can't be dead, I haven't lived!'.
- Capt. Thiele: Who has?
- Capt. Thiele: I'm glad to get out of Veracruz. The whole damn country is ready to explode. Well, did you get a look at them? Anything interesting? Anything interesting at all?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: There is a dwarf. That high.
- [holds his hand level with his hip]
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: A couple of young American painters. And a Jewish salesman - with an infectious sense of humor.
- Capt. Thiele: Women, Willie. Women!
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Well, a rather attractive middle-aged American woman, but I'm afraid she's too far from the cradle for you.
- Capt. Thiele: Those are the kind that can sometimes appreciate what they are getting.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: What are you laughing at?
- La Condesa: My house has been burned. They've taken everything I had. Now, I'm being taken to prison to an island I know nothing about. And you're giving me a Sunday school sermon.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: You can put your robe back on, now.
- La Condesa: You gonna help me?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Your Doctor may have helped you to often.
- La Condesa: I'm very helpless at this moment.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: How old are you?
- La Condesa: Old enough, as you can see. Much too old.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Forty-five?
- La Condesa: Not *that* old.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: How old are you?
- La Condesa: Forty-two.
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Take off your robe.
- La Condesa: You're sure you're the ship's doctor?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Oh, I am the ship's doctor.
- [La Condesa removes her robe]
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: Lean forward please. What is it?
- La Condesa: Your hands are cold.
- Rieber: Shall we play again? Or, perhaps, I might suggest another game.
- Lizzi Spoekenkieker: What game?
- Rieber: Any game! One which *you* might win.
- Lizzi Spoekenkieker: What game do you mean?
- Rieber: You have no idea?
- Lizzi Spoekenkieker: I will not let you talk that way to me!
- [turns around to leave, Rieber spanks her behind with a ping pong paddle]
- Rieber: So!
- Lizzi Spoekenkieker: Oh!
- Rieber: I'm sorry.
- Lizzi Spoekenkieker: How dare you!
- Rieber: I could not resist.
- Jenny Brown: My mother's never been satisfied with it. She taught me that a woman had to have something of her very own outside of her husband; otherwise, it was bridge games and one day a week at the hospital.
- Mary Treadwell: Oh, we put up a wonderful front in public. We were everybody's favorite couple, but, in private, it was something else again. He was jealous of me. So jealous of me, that he hit me. He hit me till I bled at the nose.
- Jenny Brown: I wonder whether David would beat me.
- La Condesa: What about your childhood? Did nothing gay ever happen to you, at all?
- Dr. Wilhelm Schumann: No. I was the perfect dupe. I believed anything anybody told me. I was full of the highest hopes and the most unbelievable innocents. However, it's true, at the age of 12, I did have an experience with the housekeeper. It left an indelible impression on me, shocked my mother to no end, and cost the poor girl her job.
- La Condesa: Well, There is hope for you, after all.
- Glocken: One of the saddest things in the world must be to see two people who feel so much for each other and who feel that they belong together and, yet, they really don't belong together at all.
- La Condesa: Did you ever have all the worst possible things that can happen to you, happen? Well, it gives you the most irresponsible feeling. Nothing more can happen.
- Mary Treadwell: Forty-six. Me! Forty-six. I can't believe it. Forty-six.
- Lt. Huebner: Well, we Europeans are not as conscious of age as you are. Besides, when one looks as you do and arouses in people the feeling you do, does it really matter?
- Mary Treadwell: You're very kind, but it's the time when hearts grow cold and hard. Women lose their grace and become shrill. They run to fat or turn to beanpole. Take to secret drinking. They marry men too young for them and get just what they deserve. It's enough to scare anyone waiting for fear and loneliness to do their work.
- Lt. Huebner: Mrs. Treadwell, you are a very exciting woman, and you know it.
- Mary Treadwell: Tell me, would it unnerve you to have an affair with me?