What’s My Line?

"I’m terribly sorry, ma'm. I can assure you that at no time did I mean to be so upsetting. As a matter of fact, I’ve always had kind of a secret yen for the quiet type. Get what I mean, babe?"

"Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea you were in heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place!! Hahahahaha!!! Hahahahahaha!!! Hohohohohoho!!"

"And I take offense to armchair warriors like you, who don’t know what a shrapnel wound feels like. Or what death smells like after three days in the sun. Or the look in a man’s eyes when he realizes he’s minus a leg and his blood is seeping out."

"But that wasn’t the end of it. The raft was found, and Rickenbacker was saved. He became the president of an airlines company. I’ve got dozens of items like that. Men talked about who never existed. Men who existed but not even mentioned. Historical events that I know happened a certain way that, according to the encyclopedia, didn’t happen or happened another
way."

"Do you ever cut loose and dance a fast Charleston? No, most unlikely, most unlikely. You are the only woman I know, who looks as if underneath her clothes, she wore clothes. You have all the grace and femininity of a high-buttoned shoe."

"After chasing half the Bronx and the entire borough of Manhattan, you pin the blue ribbon on me! Which means I win a used nitwit, to keep, to pamper, to feed and obey, ‘til death us do part?!"

"Why don’t you go back where you came from? We don’t want you here!"

"That's all there is, is the majority. The minority musta died on the cross, two thousand years ago."

"That machine costs two cents an hour for current. It gets no wrinkles, no arthritis, no hardening of the arteries. That one machine is a lathe operator, a press operator. Two of those machines replace 114 men that take no coffee breaks, no sick leaves, no vacations with pay!"

"I move now, I streak across the sky, I leave an earth behind that changes beyond my closed eyes. From a warm place of leaves and trees to a cold orb hanging in the sky, growing smaller and smaller and smaller. It inexorably passes and I can do nothing about it."

"This is where the men separate from the nutsies.... I’m going back to CP if I can find it.  But don’t worry, boys, I’ll send you a padded ambulance. Arrivederci, you all!"

"There was snow on winter nights. Gossamer stuff. It floated down and covered the Earth, made it all white, cool. And in the mornings we could go out and built a snowman, see our breath in the air, and it was good then, it was right."

"If this one ain't sure fire, I'll cut off both my hands, I'll absolutely cut off both my hands. You ready? Are you ready? Champion of the World. Kirk Douglas, maybe. Burt Lancaster.  You want to make him younger, Tony Curtis!"

"Well, for the sake of argument, let's say I'm something of a connoisseur. You have a very choice soul, and as the vintners say - it's a good year."

"Poetry that left their minds the minute they themselves left. Aged slogans that were out of date when I taught them. Quotations dear to me that were meaningless to them."

"They sure picked themselves a corker of a deity."

"Don't touch the tools!"

"Baby didn't live more than an hour. And then she followed him."

"I do apologize, father. I know how accustomed to perfection you are and I hate to throw a stone in that serene pool of yours but you forgot something. Do you know that? You forgot something. They may be indestructible, father, but you're not!"

"Please, try to understand. This isn't makeup. I've grown older, darling. In another world many, for many, many lonely years, I've had only a memory of you to live on."

"The pièce de résistance now. The real combination. Ultimate ingenuity. It is one thing, gentlemen, to stop a train on its way from Fort Knox to Los Angeles and steal its cargo. It's another thing to stay free to spend it, and spend it we shall."

"It's musty. Smells like an old sofa. Then you wait. Every muscle tense and straining. Any second. Any second. Then you can almost hear it."

"Oh, that's just great. That's fine, isn't it? Get comfortable and get a little hot food in you. That's precious little consolation for missing my meeting in Boston. That's a fine little bus line you work for, isn't it? They care so much about their schedules, don't they?"

"You got less time than you think, but you never had time. You didn't have time when that parole officer tried to help you. You could have listened to him, but you joined another gang."

"You take what you get and you live with it. Sometimes it's sweet frosting and nice gravy. Sometimes it's sour, it goes down hard, but you live with it..."

"All of us wait for our turn and we simply do not overstay it! Now, it was my turn starting last night. I'm one day delayed already."

"She's dressed in a soft blouse, old fashioned broach, and a full skirt. Her hair is attractively arranged. She's coming up the front walk. She's crossing the porch. She's opening the front door. She's closing it. She's walking across the hall."

"I’m afraid the day of the lone inventor has passed. I had some of the finest scientific minds in the world assisting me. Of course, they didn’t take the project seriously. To them, it was just a game, a lot of theoretical wool-gathering."

"He’s a lie! He’s a concoction! Nobody’s seen him, nobody’s heard him. Nobody knows who he is or where he’s from. You made him up. You cut him out of whole cloth."

"I want you to listen to me because this is important. You’re over thirty years old and you’re living exactly the way you did when you were fourteen. Some of it’s mama’s fault. But some of it’s yours."