His Girl Friday quotes

View Quote Diamond Louie: Down Western Avenue, we was going sixty-five miles an hour...We run smack into a police patrol. you know what I mean? We busted it in half!...Can you imagine bumping into a load of cops? They come rolling out like oranges!...When I come to, I was running down Thirty-fourth Street...The driver got knocked cold...I don't think she's [Bruce's mother] squawking much, you know what I mean?...Say listen, me with a gun on the hip and a kidnapped old lady on my hands, I'm gonna stick around askin' questions from a lot of cops?

View Quote Mayor: A guy who's done nothing for the last forty years but play pinochle gets elected Governor and right away, he thinks he's a Tarzan.

View Quote Mayor: Do you realize there are two hundred thousand votes at stake? And if Earl Williams don't hang, we're gonna lose 'em?

View Quote Bruce: Even ten minutes is a long time to be away from you.
Hildy: What did you say?
Bruce: What?
Hildy: Go on. [He laughs sheepishly] Well, go ahead.
Bruce: Well, I just said, 'Even ten minutes is a long time to be away from you.'
Hildy: I heard you the first time. I like it. That's why I asked you to say it again.

View Quote Bruce: How long would the interview take?
Walter: Oh, about an hour for the interview. Another hour to write it. That's about all.
Bruce: Hildy, we could take the six o'clock train if it'd save a man's life.
Hildy: No, Bruce. [To Walter] If you want to save Earl Williams' life, you write the interview yourself. You're still a good reporter.
Walter: Aw, Hildy. You know I can't write that kind of thing. It takes a woman's touch. It needs that heart, that...
Hildy: Now don't get poetic, Walter. Get Sweeney. He's the best man you've got on the paper for that sob-sister stuff.
Walter: [explaining that Sweeney is not to be found because he is out celebrating the birth of twins] So Sweeney has twins, and Earl Williams gets hanged tomorrow. [to Bruce] Well you argue with her. You argue with her. Otherwise, you're going on a honeymoon with blood on your hands. How can you have any happiness after that? All through the years, you'll remember that a man went to the gallows because she was too selfish to wait two hours. I tell ya, Bruce, Earl Williams' face will come between you on the train tonight and at the preacher's tomorrow, and all the rest of your lives.
Hildy: I just remembered. Sweeney was only married four months ago.
Walter: All right, Hildy, you win. I'm licked.

View Quote Bruce: Remember, if you change your mind, I'm leaving on the nine o'clock train.
Hildy: If you want me, Bruce, you've gotta take me as I am instead of trying to change me into something else. I'm no suburban bridge player. I'm a newspaperman. Darn it.

View Quote Bruce: You know, Hildy, he's not such a bad fellow.
Hildy: No, he should make some girl real happy.
Bruce: Uh-huh.
Hildy: [To herself] Slap-happy.
Bruce: He's not the man for you. I can see that. But I sort of like him. He's got a lot of charm.
Hildy: Well, he comes by it naturally. His grandfather was a snake.

View Quote Hildy: 'While hundreds of Sheriff Hartwell's paid gunmen stalked through the city shooting innocent bystanders, spreading their reign of terror, Earl Williams was lurking less than twenty yards from the Sheriff's Office where...'
Walter: Wait a minute, wait a minute, aren't you going to mention the Post? Doesn't the paper get any credit?
Hildy: Well, honey, I did that. Right there in the second paragraph.
Walter: Who's gonna read the second paragraph? Listen honey, for ten years, I've been telling ya how to write a newspaper story and that's all I get?

View Quote Hildy: A big fat lummox like you - hiring an airplane to write: 'Hildy, don't be hasty, remember my dimple.' Walter. It delayed our divorce twenty minutes while the judge went out to watch it.
Walter: I've still got the dimple and in the same place.

View Quote Hildy: All I know is that instead of two weeks in Atlantic City with my bridegroom, I spent two weeks in a coal mine with John Krupsky. You don't deny that, do you Walter?
Walter: Deny it? I'm proud of it. We beat the whole country on that story.
Hildy: Well, I suppose we did. That isn't what I got married for!

View Quote Hildy: He's an insurance salesman. That's a good, honest business, isn't it?
Walter: Oh certainly, it's honest. It's also adventurous, it's romantic. Listen, Hildy, I can't picture you being surrounded by policies, policies...
Hildy: I can, I can, and I like it, what's more. Besides, he forgets the office when he's with me...He doesn't treat me like an errand boy either, Walter. He treats me like a woman.
Walter: He does, does he? How did I treat ya, like a water buffalo?
Hildy: I don't know from water buffalos, but I do know about him. He's kind and he's sweet and he's considerate. He wants a home and children.
Walter: Sounds more like a guy I ought to marry. What's his name?
Hildy: Uh, Baldwin. Bruce Baldwin.
Walter: Baldwin, Baldwin. Oh, I knew a Baldwin once. A horse thief in Mississippi. Couldn't be the same fella, could it?
Hildy: You're now talking about the man I'm marrying tomorrow.
Walter: Tomorrow? As soon as that?

View Quote Hildy: I have to do a yarn on Williams. Did he know what he was doing when he fired that gun?
Murphy: If you ask us, 'No.' If you ask the state alienist, the answer is 'Yes.'
Hildy: Who is he? What's he do?
Jake McCue: He was a bookkeeper. He starts out at twenty dollars a week and after fourteen years, he gradually works himself up to seventeen fifty...Plus the company goes out of business and Williams loses his job...
Ernie: So he starts hangin' around the park, listenin' to a lot of soapbox spellbinders makin' phony speeches and begins to believe 'em.
Endicott: And makes some of his own.

View Quote Hildy: I spent six weeks in Reno, then Bermuda, oh, about four months, I guess. It seems like yesterday to me.
Walter: Maybe it was yesterday, Hildy. Been seeing me in your dreams?
Hildy: Oh, no, Mama doesn't dream about you anymore, Walter. You wouldn't know the old girl now.
Walter: I'd know you anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

View Quote Hildy: I thought you were really sending me away with Bruce. I didn't know you had him locked up. I thought you were on the level for once. I think you were just standing by and letting me go off with him without doing a thing about it.
Walter: Oh come on, honey. What do you think I was? A chump?
Hildy: And I thought you didn't love me.
Walter: Oh, what were you thinking with?
Hildy: I don't know. Well, what are you standing there gawking for? We have to get him out of jail. Send Louie down with some honest money and send him back to Albany where he belongs.
Walter: Sure, sure.

View Quote Hildy: Listen to me, you great big bumble-headed baboon.
Walter: I'll make it thirty-five bucks and not a cent more.
Hildy: Walter, are you gonna listen?
Walter: But good grief, how much is that other paper gonna pay you?
Hildy: There isn't any other paper.
Walter: Oh! Well in that case, the raise is off. You go back to your old salary...
Hildy: Walter, I want to show you something. It's here. It's a ring. Take a good look at it. Do you know what it is? It's an engagement ring. I tried to tell you right away, but you would start reminiscing. I'm getting married, Walter, and I'm also getting as far away from the newspaper business as I can get.
Walter: What?
Hildy: I am through.
Walter: You can marry all you want to, Hildy, but you can't quit the newspaper business.
Hildy: Oh! Why not?
Walter: I know you, Hildy. I know what quitting would mean to you.
Hildy: And what would it mean?
Walter: It would kill ya.
Hildy: You can't sell me that, Walter Burns.
Walter: Who says I can't? You're a newspaperman.
Hildy: That's why I'm quitting. I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.
Walter: You mean be a traitor.
Hildy: A traitor? A traitor to what?
Walter: A traitor to journalism. You're a journalist, Hildy.
Hildy: A journalist? Hell, what does that mean? Peeking through keyholes? Chasing after fire engines? Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them if Hitler's gonna start another war? Stealing pictures off old ladies? I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen's wives'll know what's going on. Why-... Golly, what's the use? Walter, you-you wouldn't know what it means to want to be respectable and live a half-way normal life. The point is, I-I'm through.