Wick Birnem: If it happens, it happens and I hope it does. I've had six years of this. I've had my bellyfull... Who are we fooling? We've tried everything, haven't we? We've reasoned with him. We've baited him. We've watched him like a hawk. We've tried trusting him. How often have you cried? How often have I beaten him up? Scrape him out of a gutter and pump some kind of self-respect into him and back he falls, back in every time.
Helen St. James: He's a sick person. It's as though there was something wrong with his heart or his lungs. You wouldn't walk out on him if he had an attack. He needs our help.
Wick Birnem: He won't accept our help. Not Don, he hates us. He wants to be alone with that bottle of his. It's all he gives a hang about. Why kid ourselves? He's a hopeless alcoholic.

Don Birnam: Are you in the phone book?
Helen St. James: Yes, but I'm not home very much.
Don Birnam: Well, I'll call you at your office.
Helen St. James: Editorial Research. If Henry Luce answers, hang up.

Don Birnam: I'm not a drinker;I'm a drunk.

Don Birnam: It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yeah. But what it does to the mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michaelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer, it's the Nile. Nat, it's the Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra.

Don Birnam: Let me have one, Nat. I'm dying. Just one.

Don Birnam: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take quiet desperation!

Don Birnam: What kind of party did you say that was?
Helen St. James: A cocktail party.
Don Birnam: In that case, I'll join you.

Nat: One's too many an' a hundred's not enough.

[Nat moves to wipe away the circle of whisky from Don Birnam's glass]
Don Birnam: Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.

Helen St. James: We're both trying, Don. You're trying not to drink, and I'm trying not to love you.