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.

Blanche: Rose, if I use this permit, any kind of scum could walk through the door. Thieves, murderers, men who haven't seen a woman for 10 years, who've been doin' nothin' but liftin' weights and countin' the days. Dorothy, remind me again why this was a bad idea.

Dorothy: Nice try, Ma. Let's talk about 1920.
Sophia: Bad year. Now, 1918...
Dorothy: I said 1920.
Sophia: Okay, 1920 it is. The year I sailed for America. Ah, America. The land of opportunity, where the streets were paved with gold, and a young man named Irving Berlin was writing songs like this. Hit it. Dorothy, where's our piano player?

Sophia: Morning, Rose, Dorothy. What a night. Did you hear that racket out front? I didn't sleep at all. I think Dreyfuss has the hots for our lawn flamingo.
Dorothy: Ma, we don't have a lawn flamingo.
Sophia: In that case, we'd better tip the paperboy.