Blanche: Anyway, I got good news from my accountant. I'm being audited Tuesday.
Dorothy: Oh, lucky you.
Blanche: Dorothy, you don't get it. My accountant reminded me that I've been audited before and I've never had to pay a penny in back taxes. I have a way with auditors. The last time I was audited I got money back from the government.
Sophia: Blanche, it's not a refund when the auditor leaves two twenties on your nightstand.

Blanche: OK, Rose, I'm going to tell you a story about a young girl in high school who was very insecure about the other kids liking her. Now, she would do anything - anything - to gain their approval. She would do their homework for them, while her grades suffered. She would give them her lunch money, in the misguided belief that she could buy their acceptance. Finally, lonely and desperate for affection she gave her virginity to the first boy who showed her the slightest attention.
Dorothy: You know, Blanche, until you told this story, I never realized how much we had in common.
Blanche: We don't have anything in common. That was a story Sophia told me about you.

Sophia: OK. How about when you were unmarried and pregnant?
Dorothy: I remember your exact words: "Get out of my house. You're dead. I have no daughter named Dorothy."
Sophia: Sure, in that tone of voice it sounds bad. But I'm supporting you now. Didn't I come here to live with you in your twilight years?
Dorothy: Ma, these are your twilight years.
Sophia: Are you kidding? I'm supposed to be dead. These are your twilight years.

Dorothy: You'll, uh have to excuse me. I'm a little nervous. I'm not really a comedian. Boy, it's a little hot up here.
Sophia: How hot is it?
Dorothy: I don't know, but it's really hot.
Sophia: Hi-ho!
Dorothy: As I said before, my name is Dorothy Zbornak. And that's spelled just the way it sounds. [silence]
Sophia: You're dying. Ask us where we're from.
Dorothy: That's my mother, the Incredible Shrinking Woman. She's sitting there with the two other women that I live with. You know, at our ages, the four of us living together in the same house, we go through so many hormone changes that some nights we can actually read by the hot flashes. [laughter] You know, it's really interesting when one of us dates an eligible man - or as we call them, a live one. Although it's not really a prerequisite because I have been known to date a guy on life support. [laughter] But the trouble with dating a guy on life support is that you always have to go to his place. Every guy has an angle.
[later:]
Dorothy: And that's the trouble with the guys here in Miami. They simply cannot say those three little words: "Quick, call 911." So, that's who I am. A substitute teacher with hot flashes who still lives with her mother who heckles her. [laughter] And I wanna thank you for finding my life more amusing than I do. Good night. Thank you.

Dorothy: I don't think I'm gonna be doing my stand-up routine any more.
Sophia: How come? You were great.
Dorothy: This morning I realized that what I've been doing is no different from my dream. I mean, every time I stand in front of a classroom I face the same challenges, only I come away with something that I didn't feel last night. That maybe, possibly, I've managed to teach them a little something. Now, doing stand-up was like having sex with Stan. I was nervous before it, felt pretty good during it, and I'm absolutely thrilled that I will never have to do it again.

Dorothy: I've been sitting here looking through the book, and I can't believe how many of my classmates are gone. I mean, look. Frank Bonatardi, tight end on the football team: heart attack, dead.
Blanche: Well, Dorothy, don't think of it as Frank being dead. Just think of it as God telling Frank to go deep.
Dorothy: David Brittingham.
Blanche: What happened to him?
Dorothy: God told David to drive into a wall at 80 miles an hour.

Dorothy: I haven't done half the things on this list. I mean, what am I? I am a substitute teacher. I'll never be rich before I'm 21, I'll never be homecoming queen.
Sophia: You can still be homecoming queen. It'll just be a different kind of home.

Blanche: It was so much easier when I was married. I'd buy something expensive, George would yell at me, I'd put on a see-through nightie, and that would be the end of it. Why can't the government work that way?
Dorothy: According to the newspapers, a lot of times it does.

Blanche: I think over the past five years I might have forgotten to mention that y'all were living here with me and paying rent.
Dorothy: We just slipped your mind?
Blanche: Well, of course not, darling. But you know I think of you girls as family. Now, how would it look if they thought I was charging my own family rent?
Dorothy: Honest.
Blanche: Don't you ever get nosebleed from taking the highroad all the time?

Dorothy: Ma, do you remember Helen Colquist?
Sophia: Was she that tremendously fat woman with a wooden leg and a totally hairless cat named Cincinnati Jake?
Dorothy: No.
Sophia: Then I don't remember her.