Thomas Greer: [about being a soldier] Now remember, if you can move it, pick it up. If you can't move it, paint it. And if it moves by itself, salute it.

Martin Greer: ...Maybe that's the way we all are: we think we're on a holiday, but Somebody somewhere knows that the holiday's over.

Martin Greer: In about ten years he's going to ask me a question: What were you doing, Daddy, when the world was shaking?

[Arriving home with her husband after sending the youngest of their three sons off to the Korean War, Sarah begins trashing the husband's WWI shrine.]
Sarah Greer: Liar! Crazy, crazy liar! You never were in any one of those places and you know it. You never heard a shot fired. You were in Paris all through the war, shining up a general's boots, bringing him bicarbonate of soda when he'd drunk too much the night before. I went along with you; I thought it was childish, foolish, but I didn't think it did any harm. I thought if it made you feel any better to pretend you'd won the war alone, who did it hurt? But then I saw something: when your son Riley was killed
[in WWII]
Sarah Greer: , you were proud. And Martin was missing for four days in France; it made you feel important. You were a big man in Iverson's bar for an evening. Well, that's all over. You can take all this junk right back where you captured it with your own two hands, back to the pawn shop on Sixth Avenue in New York. As of this evening, there are no more professional heroes in this house.