Michael O'Hara: [First lines] When I start out to make a fool of myself, there's very little can stop me. If I'd known where it would end, I'd never let anything start... if I'd been in my right mind, that is. But once I'd seen her, I was not in my right mind for some time.

Michael O'Hara: [to Grisby and the Bannisters] Is this what you folks do for amusement in the evening - sit around toasting marshmallows and call each other names? If you're so anxious for me to join the game, I'll be glad to. I have a few names I'd like to be calling you myself.

Michael O'Hara: Do all rich women play games like this?

Michael O'Hara: Everybody is somebody's fool.

Michael O'Hara: I've always found it very... sanitary to be broke.

Michael O'Hara: I've always found it's sanitary to be broke.

Michael O'Hara: It's a bright, guilty world.

Michael O'Hara: Maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying.

Michael O'Hara: New York is not as big a city as it pretends to be.

Michael O'Hara: Once, off the hump of Brazil I saw the ocean so darkened with blood it was black and the sun fainting away over the lip of the sky.We'd put in at Fortaleza, and a few of us had lines out for a bit of idle fishing. It was me had the first strike. A shark it was. Then there was another, and another shark again, 'till all about, the sea was made of sharks and more sharks still, and no water at all. My shark had torn himself from the hook, and the scent, or maybe the stain it was, and him bleeding his life away drove the rest of them mad. Then the beasts to to eating each other.In their frenzy, they ate at themselves.You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stinging your eyes, and you could smell the death, reeking up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse... until this little picnic tonight.And you know, there wasn't one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.