- Myra Bruhl: Is it really that good?
- Sidney Bruhl: I'll tell you how good it is. Even a gifted director couldn't hurt it.
- Myra Bruhl: Well, have you thought about collaboration?
- Sidney Bruhl: I don't want any help in killing Clifford Anderson. I want to strike the blow myself.
- Sidney Bruhl: I wonder if it would not be... well, just a trifle starry-eyed of me to contemplate a partnership where I could count on no sense of moral obligation whatsoever.
- Sidney Bruhl: Clifford, my dear, in your run-ins with the law, in your infancy so to speak, did any of the doctors, policemen, shrinks, did any of them ever use... the... word...?
- Clifford Anderson: What word, Sidney?
- Sidney Bruhl: Sociopath?
- Clifford Anderson: Does that word... frighten you, Sidney?
- Sidney Bruhl: No, no. It does however, give me pause.
- Sidney Bruhl: Do a quick wash-up, get into bed, stay there.
- Clifford Anderson: I'll buy that.
- [Kissing Sidney]
- Sidney Bruhl: Why make it anywhere? Why make it?
- Clifford Anderson: Hahaha, because it's there, Sidney!
- Sidney Bruhl: That's mountains, not plays! Plays are not there until some asshole writes them!
- Sidney Bruhl: Darling, though I might be capable of killing Clifford Anderson, I am not up to the criminal behavior of a Broadway producer.
- Sidney Bruhl: What I should do is, beat the fat bastard over the head with that mace over there, bury him in a hole big enough to accommodate his bloat, and then send his little masterpiece off under my own name.
- Myra Bruhl: Ohh...
- Sidney Bruhl: Heh heh. Now, there's the best idea I've had in ten years.
- Myra Bruhl: Yes, darling, it's so unfair, isn't it?
- Sidney Bruhl: I mean, what's the point in owning a mace, if you don't use it?
- Clifford Anderson: It has to be a playwright who writes thrillers because, I don't know, Arthur Miller probably has old sample cases hanging on the wall.
- Clifford Anderson: [with a gun pointed at him, which only clicks and does not fire] Bang, bang. Sorry, the click is so anticlimactic, Sidney, but I needed the bullets from that gun...
- [takes a gun down from the wall]
- Clifford Anderson: ... for this one. Now sit down, down, down. Sit down! Right in that chair, thank you. "Reversal," Sidney! Remember? You stressed it in the seminar. First day!
- [last lines]
- Seymour Starger: Helga, baby, we got ourselves a smash. What a play you wrote! We're gonna make ourselves a fortune here, Helga!
- Helga Ten Dorp: Waste not, want not!
- [Clifford stops typing and sees that Sidney is reading the newspaper rather than also working]
- Clifford Anderson: Nothing doing? Why don't you have Helga Ten Dorp over? I don't know, maybe talking with her might spark something.
- [Sidney glares at him and removes the cigar from his mouth.]
- Sidney Bruhl: You do like to live dangerously, don't you?
- [Clifford sits back in his chair, chuckling.]
- Sidney Bruhl: This is Clifford Anderson, my secretary; my friend, Porter Milgrim.
- Clifford Anderson: How do you do, sir?
- Porter Milgrim: How do you do.
- Clifford Anderson: Nice to meet you.
- Sidney Bruhl: I would say "my attorney," but he'd bill me.
- Clifford Anderson: Would you like me to explain?
- Sidney Bruhl: What, that you're a lunatic with a death-wish?
- Clifford Anderson: Ha ha ha. I've got the same wish you have, Sidney - a success wish!
- Sidney Bruhl: Clifford, I hate to ask this, but could you give me your own special definition of success, being gangbanged in the shower in the state penitentiary?
- Clifford Anderson: Aw, geez, I knew you were going to have reservations about it.
- Sidney Bruhl: Reservations? I am standing here, petrified, stupefied, horrified! How's that for bloody reservations?
- Clifford Anderson: Come on, Sidney, listen. Look, there is no way... there is no way for anybody to prove what did or did not cause Myra to have a heart attack.
- Sidney Bruhl: I have a name and a reputation! Somewhat tattered, perhaps. But still good for dinner invitations and summer seminars.
- Clifford Anderson: Are you trying to say that you don't think that you can trust me?
- Sidney Bruhl: How clearly you put it!
- Joel Siegel: Well, Sidney Bruhl's new whodunit Murder Most Fair opened tonight at The Music Box. But there's no point in you folks going there, 'cause I'm gonna tell you who done it. Sidney Bruhl done it. And what's inexcusable is, he done it in public.
- Sidney Bruhl: What an extraordinary gift. I've always been skeptical about ESP, but after this...
- Helga Ten Dorp: Tonight, not in many years have I had such a feeling. Like I was 20 again.
- Sidney Bruhl: Have you always had this gift? Ever since childhood?
- Helga Ten Dorp: Especially in childhood. My parents didn't wrap Christmas presents. Why wasting paper?
- Myra Bruhl: But won't he have another copy lying around somewhere?
- Sidney Bruhl: And notes and rough drafts and outlines! And on opening day of my triumph his gray-haired old mother will come running down the aisle...
- [laughs]
- Stewart Klein: Sidney Bruhl's new play, which opened at the Music Box is billed as a comedy-thriller. So much for truth in advertising.
- [first lines]
- [the actor on stage delivers an unintelligible line]
- First Audience Member: It's the worst play I've ever seen.
- Second Audience Member: I can't believe Sidney Bruhl wrote it.
- Clifford Anderson: I want a short cut, Sidney. And I really don't care whose yard I cut through, if you understand me.