Jonathan Shields: Look. Put five men dressed like cats on the screen, what do they look like?
Fred: Like five men dressed like cats.


--Barry Sullivan (as Fred Amiel) in The Bad and the Beautiful

Jonathan Shields: When an audience pays to see a picture like this, what are they paying for?
Fred: To get the pants scared off of 'em.
Jonathan Shields: And what scares the human race more than any other single thing?
[crosses to wall switch and turns out the light]
Fred: The dark!
Jonathan Shields: Of course. And why? Because the dark has a life of its own. In the dark, all sorts of things come alive.
Fred: Suppose... suppose we never do show the cat men. Is that what you're thinking.
Jonathan Shields: Exactly.
Fred: No cat men!


--Barry Sullivan (as Fred Amiel) in The Bad and the Beautiful

Fred: Jonathan is more than a man: he's an experience. And he's habit-forming. If they could ever bottle him, he'd outsell ginger ale.


--Barry Sullivan (as Fred Amiel) in The Bad and the Beautiful

Griff Bonnell: [on being offered her foreman's job] Why me?
Jessica Drummond: I need a strong man to carry out my orders.
Griff Bonnell: And a weak man to take them.


--Barry Sullivan (as Griff Bonnell) in Forty Guns

Griff Bonnell: Last time I killed a man was 10 years ago, a boy. He was no good like your brother but he was still a boy and I killed him. I could have made a crippling shot but I didn't. Did you ever see a dead boy's eyes in the sky? Threw his gun in the west. You know why I hate to get into fights? I can't miss. Am I talking too much? In my heart I've always asked forgiveness before I kill just like an Indian asking for forgiveness from an animal before the slaughter. You can't ask after you kill, it's too late then. I didn't come here to talk about that, I came to talk about Brockie. He put Charlie Savage's corpse on public display in a store window. A boy who do a thing like that is dead, or nearly dead, but there's still time.


--Barry Sullivan (as Griff Bonnell) in Forty Guns

Jim Flood: You know, you'd make a fair to middling bad man if you ever gave yourself half a chance.


--Barry Sullivan (as ) in Seven Ways from Sundown

Lieutenant Tunner: Now I know why your eyes are always at half-mast, sheriff - your brain is dead.


--Barry Sullivan (as ) in Cry of the Hunted

Ray Calvert: That's the way to be born if you gotta be born, Coop. Boston money, smart and snotty, everything comin' to you. The superintendent of this here Indian reservation has got the finest legs I've ever seen on man or beast. It's too bad she don't like you, Coop. There's gold in them hills.


--Barry Sullivan (as Ray Calvert) in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here

Tycoon: [about Charley] He's a nut when it comes to dignity


--Barry Sullivan (as Tycoon) in Any Number Can Play

[last lines]
Avery 'Beauty' Phillips: The sun is shinin'; funny, I didn't expect the sun to be shinin'.


--Barry Sullivan (as Avery 'Beauty' Phillips) in Queen Bee