- Clayton 'Clay' Anderson: [to his mother while decorating Christmas tree] Mother, there aren't enough icicles on your side.
- Estelle: You've always been in over your head. You couldn't cope. Just as you can't cope now. You're still a little shop girl from San Francisco. You should've stayed on the other side of the counter.
- Dan Sullivan: I'll buy you some new clothes, fix that hair a believable color. You'll be respectable.
- Holly Parker: The road between me and respectability is strewn with broken bottles.
- Dan Sullivan: Respectable enough for my purposes.
- Phil Benton: In our neck of the woods, it's the facade that counts. It covers our corrosion.
- Holly Parker: Well, that's hardly unique to Fairfield County.
- Phil Benton: It was spawned here. This is the breeding ground of the shallow set.
- Clayton 'Clay' Anderson: Darling, I have got to prove that I stand for something on my own. That I'm not just another rich man's son living on dividends.
- Phil Benton: [to Holly] How about taking in the Rodgers and Hammerstein opening next Friday? Can you escape from the Ice Palace?
- Estelle: Anderson men are ambitious, Holly. They can't be changed, and they won't be stopped. Anderson wives must learn to wait.
- Phil Benton: You have to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
- Holly Parker: Why, thank you, kind sir. You make me feel like a woman again.
- Phil Benton: Darling, no one could possibly miss the fact you're a woman.
- Holly Parker: Now there's really a subtle compliment.
- Holly Parker: I've been so lost lately. I needed to see you, to be close to you again. I guess I needed to feel needed.
- Clayton 'Clay' Anderson: Don't you ever doubt that you're needed.
- Clayton 'Clay' Anderson: I want to kiss you, but you seem so far away.
- Holly Parker: It's been - such a long time.
- Phil Benton: Don't tell me you're afraid of your husband?
- Holly Parker: I'm in love with my husband.
- Phil Benton: Are you sure?
- Phil Benton: To life! It's only a bore when you take it seriously.
- Holly Parker: Well, I'll drink to that!
- Holly Parker: Why, you contemptible, rotten...
- Phil Benton: Contemptible, rotten what? Never end on a dangling insult.
- Clayton 'Clay' Anderson: I've found the house. It's red frame all right, with three brick fireplaces, and there's a bonus. A secret panel where they swear Dolly Madison hid the Constitution.
- Clayton 'Clay' Anderson: Don't get in the way of any wild elephants. Remember, you've got a very lonely husband waiting in Washington.
- Dan Sullivan: What you need is a hair of the dog. Come on, I've got a bottle.
- Holly Parker: Friend, you are a friend.
- Holly Parker: I, my friend, am very drunk. With any luck at all, very soon, I'm gonna be a lot drunker.
- Estelle: An account has been opened in the name of Elizabeth Miller at the International Bank of Geneva. As soon as you're ashore, go there and get your signature on record. The sum on deposit will be duplicated every January. In the event of my death, my executors have been instructed to continue the deposit, annually, as long as you live.
- Holly Parker: He fished me out of the sewers of Mexico. He bought me dirt cheap. A couple of aspirin, a few bottles of whiskey.
- Dan Sullivan: Keep drinking, honey. I like you better drunk than sober.
- Holly Parker: I like the world better drunk than sober. I can forget that it's filled with vermin.
- Clay Anderson Jr.: Does the lioness lose favor with God when she fights for her cubs? Does the mother bear, who kills at the mouth of the cave? In all creation is there the female of the species who will not sacrifice her own life to protect the life she has conceived?
- Clay Anderson Jr.: The prosecution asks for justice. I would remind him and you of the towering words of Sophocles. "There is a point at which even justice is unjust." Justice must be fair. It must be merciful. It must be understanding.
- Holly Parker: All right, I'll go a few rounds with you. But I warn you, if you're thinking of playing against me, think again.
- Dan Sullivan: What makes you so suspicious?
- Holly Parker: Experience, friend.
- Holly Parker: The moments of love are the only ones that matter. The moments of love illuminate and are gone. Treasure them.