Blanche: I wish Mr. Fix-It would come back and finish working on that dishwasher. The dishes are piling up like crazy.
Dorothy: Well, you know, Blanche, we could wash them. I mean, before dishwashers, people didn't just eat and wipe the dishes on their pants.
Rose: I used to love washing dishes. In Minnesota, the whole family would get together and wash dishes. Even Uncle Gustaf, after the giant Swiss army knife accident, learned to dry dishes with his feet. We used to laugh and carry on and have such a happy time.

Blanche: I knew you shouldn't have gone to Columbia University. It's in New York City, for heaven's sake. A subway runs right through it. You want to go to college where there are green lawns and willow trees and young men in chinos and ties. And professors with just a touch of gray at the temple. Wise, learned men who look up your skirt if you're sitting in the first row. Meetings with them so they can explain Plato. And they lean over your books with you and you can smell their pipe tobacco and their maleness. Then their arm accidentally brushes against your bosoms and the room is filled with the heat of a taboo lust.

Sophia: In Sicily, we had a guy with a multiple personality. Only, they didn't get along. And one personality put out a contract on the other. You should have seen it, he had a shoot-out with himself in the piazza. He winged a priest, a waiter and shot down the Cinzano sign. Fortunately, he was able to beat himself senseless before anyone else got hurt.

Sophia: What is it with you people? All you had was happy times? It's sickening. Happy times freezing in the cold, happy times during the locust invasion, happy times eating reindeer. How about death? Did you have happy times then?
Rose: Well, yes, actually, we did. It was a chance to get together and remember other happy times.
Sophia: She's beginning to get to me.

Sophia: In Sicily, we used to wash our dishes in the river.
Dorothy: [doorbell] I hope that's Mr. Fix-It.
Sophia: We used to beat them against the rocks.
Blanche: No, Sophia. You used to beat the clothes on the rocks, not the dishes.
Sophia: No wonder they broke.

Renee: George was on call all weekend. Three heart attacks, a stroke, two aneurysms and a spastic colon.
Sophia: Sounds like a guy I play checkers with.

Blanche: I never had that empty-nest depression. I couldn't wait for my kids to get out on their own. I got depressed watching them grow older 'cause it meant I was getting older. They were like noisy little calendars.
The minute they all entered high school, I told everybody they were my husband's from a previous marriage.
Dorothy: And you wonder why they're in therapy.

Sophia: Listen, last week I left him a stool sample. If I can talk to him about that, you can say you're Ionely.

Rose: It's called the empty-nest syndrome. When I had it, I didn't know what it was. I was just very depressed. By the time I figured out what it was, I was gonna tell Charlie, but he died that night. I was so full of grief about Charlie, I forgot to be depressed about the empty nest.

Renee: Maybe I should go into therapy. At 2am, waiting for George to come home, I called a radio talk show with a solution to the Middle East crisis.
Rose: Giving the Palestinians Greenland?
Renee: You heard it?
Rose: I didn't know that was you. You were great.
Dorothy: Giving the Palestinians Greenland?
Renee: It's a big place. Nobody uses it.
Dorothy: You would take a desert people and put them in ice and snow?
Rose: With the proper clothes, they'll be fine.