- Ritchie Petrie: [told to go to bed] Should I shut the door so I don't hear the fight?
- Rob Petrie: There's no fight, Rich. Go to bed.
- Laura Petrie: And shut the door.
- Miss Prinder: [reading her story] "And as the bullet ripped through his guts, splattering blood all over the walls and ceiling, Johnny Moxie breathed his last rotten breath. Marian looked at the gaping hole in his ugly, drunken body and said, 'Johnny Moxie, you stink!'"
- Miss Prinder: [Reading her composition] "And as the bullet ripped through his guts, spattering blood all over the walls and ceiling, Johnny Moxie breathed his last rotten breath. Marion looked at the gaping hole in his ugly, drunken body, and said, 'Johnny Moxie, you stink!'"
- Mr. Caldwell: Yes, well, you certainly have a very vivid imagination, Miss Prinder. But I think novices - this is, writers who are beginning - should write about things they are familiar with.
- Miss Prinder: I'm familiar with this.
- Mr. Caldwell: You are?
- Miss Prinder: Oh, yes. My grandfather was a strikebreaker.
- Rob Petrie: [suspiciously] Uh-huh.
- Laura Petrie: What "uh-huh?"
- Rob Petrie: [with a smile] Oh, noth... nothin'.
- Laura Petrie: Rob, that "nothing" was something.
- Rob Petrie: Huh?
- Laura Petrie: You never say "nothing" unless you mean "something."
- Rob Petrie: Well, no, it was just a nothing "nothing," that's all.
- Millie Helper: You ready to go to class?
- Laura Petrie: Yeah. Rob will be here in a minute. I just have to finish typing this.
- Millie Helper: Jerry typed mine. The idiot, he typed the whole thing with one hand.
- Laura Petrie: How come?
- Millie Helper: He was holdin' his nose with the other one.
- Sally Rogers: I'd love to help you, Rob. Really, I would, but I've got a heavy date.
- Buddy Sorrell: Yeah, and I've got a heavy wife.
- [Rob suspects people of being nice to Laura and Ritchie in order to get to him]
- Rob Petrie: First they start out being nice to you, and then all of a sudden they ask me if I'll give a lecture or write a play or collaborate on something.
- Laura Petrie: All right, name one person who ever did that. I bet you can't name one.
- Rob Petrie: The Chairman of the Parents' Council, Mrs. something-or-other. And the... the vice-president of the bank, honey. He kept giving you extra pens, and he finally asked me to write him an act.
- Laura Petrie: Uh-huh.
- Rob Petrie: And who... who was it from the...?
- Laura Petrie: See? Ya can't name ANY of 'em.
- Laura Petrie: You wouldn't let Buddy and Sally read this, would you?
- Rob Petrie: D'you want Buddy and Sally's opinion?
- Laura Petrie: I would LOVE it. They are honest, intelligent people. They haven't got any axes to grind. At least they'd be objective about it. I would WELCOME their opinion.
- Rob Petrie: [accepting Laura's paper] Well, all right, but I'll tell you they're professional writers, just like me, and they're gonna admit that this is not very good.
- Laura Petrie: [snatching her paper back] What do they know?
- Rob Petrie: [after reading Laura's story] Whadda YOU think, Sal.
- Sally Rogers: Well, there's something wrong with the beginning.
- Rob Petrie: What?
- Sally Rogers: It leads to the rest of it.
- Rob Petrie: Look, I know what you've been trying to do with Laura. I just came down to tell you it's all right with me.
- Laura Petrie: ROB! Darling, you don't know what you're saying.
- Rob Petrie: Yes, I do, honey. Look, it's better than fighting.
- Mr. Caldwell: I'm madly passionately in love with you since the moment I saw you at registration and you put your tiny little pink card into my hand.
- Laura Petrie: Oh, Rob was right You... you did have an ulterior motive.
- Mr. Caldwell: Of course he was right, you're absol... who's Rob?
- Laura Petrie: My husband. He just didn't know how ulterior your motives were.
- Mr. Caldwell: Now, you write about two lovers saying goodbye at a railway station. Why did you use the dialogue form instead of the narrative?
- Laura Petrie: Well, I just wanted to try my hand at dialogue.
- Mr. Caldwell: And you did very well. Very well indeed for the woman's speeches, but the man's dialogue sounded like a cowboy saying goodbye to his horse.
- Laura Petrie: Can you imagine, a man who was hired to teach housewives creative writing has the nerve to come right out and flirt, shamelessly?
- Sally Rogers: Shocking.
- [gets up to leave]
- Rob Petrie: Where are you going, Sal?
- Sally Rogers: To see if there's an opening in that rat's class.
- Millie Helper: You know, maybe I'm a little hard on Jerry. After all, he said I could be a writer because I look a little bit like Joyce Kilmer.
- Laura Petrie: Joyce Kilmer?
- Millie Helper: Yeah, you think so?
- Laura Petrie: Millie, Joyce Kilmer was a man.
- Millie Helper: I'll kill him. I'll kill him.