Rose: I remember when I was a little girl back in St. Olaf. There was this old lady who lived up the street. She never smiled. I mean, she always looked angry. The kids said she'd kill anyone who even stepped on her property. We called her Mean Old Lady Higgenlooper.
Blanche: Yeah, kids can be pretty cruel.
Rose: No. That was her name. Mean Old Lady Higgenlooper. She had it changed legally 'cause everybody called her that anyway.
Blanche: Then how come your name isn't Big Dummy?
Rose: Well, there were already three other people in town with that name. But that's beside the point. One day I got up the courage to go up to Mean Old Lady Higgenlooper and ask her why she always frowned. Well, she had been born with no smiling muscles. I pointed out that a frown is just a smile turned upside down. So from then on, whenever I'd go by, she'd stand on her head and wave.

Rose: Well, it wasn't unnatural in St. Olaf. We not only took care of our old people, we revered them, honored them, put them on a pedestal. 'Course, that's how we got to be the broken hip capital of the Midwest.

Miles: I mean, it is amazing, isn't it, how with a few carefully chosen words, a poet can convey the immediacy of a specific life experience?
Rose: You don't have to tell me. Remember, I grew up in a small farm town. "Here a quack, there a quack, everywhere a quack, quack."

Rose: It's the 117th anniversary of the birth of Robert Frost.
Sophia: I love him. Always nippin' at your nose.
Rose: That was Jack Frost. Robert Frost is the guy who interviewed Richard Nixon on TV. Who's the dumb one now?
Dorothy: Ah, you're still the reigning champ, Rose. That was David Frost. Robert Frost was a famous American poet.
Sophia: And when I was with him, he was always nippin' at my nose. Some people found it obnoxious. For me, it was a turnon.

Rose: Now I know how my friend Mary Jane von Helfenpfelfer felt.
Blanche: Oh, well. Considering what you've been through, go ahead, Rose.
Rose: She took a vacation to Mexico and she found this poor, scrawny, helpless little Chihuahua puppy on the street. And she brought it home to St. Olaf with her, and she nursed it back to health. She loved it. She took it to bed with her. She taught it to fetch. She'd throw a ball, and he'd bring it back, and she'd throw a ball, and he'd bring it back. Well, I guess I don't have to tell you that's pretty much what "fetch" is.
Dorothy: How much longer are we gonna circle the airport, Rose? You wanna bring this baby in?
Rose: When she took the puppy to get his shots, the vet told her the bad news. He said, "Mary Jane, this is no Chihuahua, this is a rat."
Dorothy: And the point, Aesop?
Rose: I thought Miles was a Chihuahua. It turns out he was a rat.