Rose: Oh, I've never been in jail. I won't make it. They always prey on the weak and innocent. The others will taunt me for trying to excel at my work in the laundry. I'll fall in with a bad crowd whose leader looks like Ethel Merman. And I'll be forced to engineer a daring prison break using my laundry cart. From that time on I won't know a moment's peace. I'll scar my fingerprints with battery acid and I'll run from town to town taking jobs that people have who got bad grades in school. And then one day they'll find me, holed up in a shack in the Louisiana bayou. And a sheriff named Bull will call my name over a megaphone. And when I make a run for it, he'll riddle my body with bullets. Oh, please don't let them take me downtown. I wanna live. I wanna live!
Dorothy: You're not good in a crisis, are you, Rose?

Blanche: Dorothy, do you think Burt's gonna like this dress?
Dorothy: Oh, yeah. And that plunging neckline will really show off his chest hair.
Blanche: You know, the last time I wore this was at the 1972 presidential inauguration. I danced in the arms of the president. The next morning I woke up still in his arms.
Dorothy: Blanche. You and Nixon?
Blanche: Nixon? Yuck. No. I can't even picture Nixon naked. He must look like one of those little dress-up dolls. Just little mounds of plastic to indicate where everything oughta be. No, I was talking about Mr William "Buster" Collier. The president of the Chamber of Commerce.
Dorothy: Oh, that presidential inauguration.
Blanche: You know, Buster wanted me to be his First Lady but he died two days later.
Dorothy: I'm sorry.
Blanche: He was performing his first official function: Breaking a champagne bottle over the city's new tollbooth. But before he could step out of the way, he was run over by ten Shriners on minibikes, who just happened to have the exact change.
Dorothy: So many of our great leaders have gone that way.

Blanche: Mr John Forsythe. Oh, my God. He's just the sexiest man in television. And Burt Reynolds is the sexiest man in the movies. Oh, I cannot believe this. All that manliness in one room. In one crowded room. I one hot crowded room. Everybody's steamy bodies all pressed up...
Dorothy: Blanche. Blanche. Relax. You're about to set off the smoke detector.

Dorothy: Listen, you punk. You wanna fight with someone, you'll have to fight me. But I warn you, I did time in Attica.
Woman: Attica's a men's prison.
Dorothy: I know. I was there a year before they found out.
Woman: Sorry, chief. I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers.
Blanche: Oh, Dorothy. That was magnificent. How did you ever pull that off?
Dorothy: I work in the public school system. It's not that different from this.

Rose: Well, Butter Queen was our town's highest honor. From the time I was born my folks groomed me for it. Singing lessons, dancing lessons, junior butter pageants. For 16 years my entire life revolved around butter.
Dorothy: You were very fortunate. So many of us wasted our youth.
Rose: When the time came for the pageant, I was incredible. I showed poise in the evening-gown competition. I was brilliant in the oral butter quiz. They couldn't even trip me up with a trick margarine question. That evening butter was spelt R-O-S-E.
Dorothy: Rose, you're embarrassing yourself. Please don't go on.
Rose: I have to, Dorothy. I've kept these bitter butter memories too long. As the pageant drew to its frenzied finale, there I was, alongside the other two finalists, churning my guts out. When all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, my churn jammed.
Women: No!
Rose: Yes. And just like that, it was over. I'd lost. It was the biggest disappointment in my life. It was small consolation to find out, years later, there had been churn-tampering involved.

Dorothy: We are not jealous, Ma. We are angry. You left us sitting in jail.
Sophia: Hey, I sent over the bail money. You were out an hour later. I think that was just about the time I was nibbling a giant shrimp out of Jerry Reed's hand.
Dorothy: You're making this whole thing up just to rub it in. You have never met these people.
Sophia: Jealousy is a very ugly thing, Dorothy. And so are you in anything backless.

Dorothy: Well?
Exterminator: Your infestation profile is threefold. You have silverfish and water bugs in the drainage areas. And under the baseboards you have Blattaria andropolis.
Dorothy: Did you hear that, Rose? The president of Greece lives under our baseboard.
Exterminator: Blattaria andropolis is a cockroach.
Rose: Maybe he'll be voted out next election.

Dorothy: Ma, thank God you're here.
Sophia: Arrested for prostitution. I can't believe it.
Blanche: Oh, Sophia. Sophia, we're innocent.
Sophia: I know that. I can't believe that these dumb cops can think anyone would pay money to sleep with you.

Burt Reynolds: Hello. Sophia around?
Sophia: Oh, hi, Burt.
Burt Reynolds: How about a little lunch?
Sophia: Listen, if you're buying, how about a big lunch?
Blanche: My God. You're Mr Burt Reynolds.
Burt Reynolds: I hope so, otherwise I got the wrong underwear on. These the roommates you told me about?
Sophia: Yeah.
Burt Reynolds: Which one's the slut?
Dorothy, Blanche and Rose: I am.

Rose: Blanche, what's the matter?
Blanche: Oh, girls, I'm just in ecstasy. My body is tingling all over. You will never guess what just happened.
Sophia: We know what happened. Let us guess what part of the Middle East he's from.