Blanche: The fact is, I happen to be very good with sick people. I was once a candy stripper.
Dorothy: That's "striper."
Blanche: Whatever. You know, a volunteer.

Blanche: Well, now I know why Hemingway killed himself. Oh, girls, I have writer's block. It is the worst feeling in the world.
Sophia: Try ten days without a bowel movement sometime.
Blanche: You just sit there hour after hour after hour.
Sophia: Tell me about it.

Rose: You know, there are all sorts of things that people get that they can't diagnose. And then they disappear just as mysteriously as they came. Gustav Ljungqvist got sick from something mysterious, and he nearly died. Well, he did die, in fact. Then at the cemetery, Beatrice Ljungqvist - his wife - kept screaming, "He's alive, he's alive! I can hear him from the grave!" Well, everybody thought it was the hallucinations of a grieving widow, so they sedated her. But when she woke up from her sedation, she told them that he said, from the grave, "We never paid our '78 through '86 income taxes." And his partner said, "Only Gustav would know that. He must be alive." So they all raced to the cemetery, and the entire town started digging like crazy - kneeling by the grave, using their hands even, dirt flying and Beatrice screaming - and when they opened that coffin, there he was, dead as a doornail.
Blanche: What is the point of that ridiculous story, Rose?
Rose: The point is Gustav didn't die from his mysterious disease at all. He lived and recovered. Trouble was, he recovered while he was buried, so by the time they got to him, he'd died of suffocation.
Blanche: I just don't believe these stories you tell, Rose.
Rose: The other tragic aspect was the IRS was waiting at the cemetery to arrest Gustav's partner, Bergstrom. So Bergstrom killed himself right then and there, by grabbing the gun from Sheriff Tokvisten and shooting himself. What they did then was, since the grave was still open, and everybody was right there, and Gustav and Bergstrom had been partners, so they put Bergstrom in with Gustav and had a double burial. Unfortunately, later they found out that Bergstrom wanted to be cremated.
Blanche: Oh, shut up, Rose!