Isaac Davis: I give the whole thing... four weeks. That's it.
Mary Wilke: I, I can't plan that far in advance.
Isaac Davis: You can't plan four weeks in advance?
Mary Wilke: No!
Isaac Davis: What kind of foresight is that?
Willie Davis: Why can't we have frankfurters?
Isaac Davis: Because, this is the Russian Tea Room.
Isaac Davis: The steel cube was brilliant?
Mary Wilke: Yes. To me it was very textual, you know what I mean? It was perfectly integrated, and it had a marvelous kind of negative capability. The rest of the stuff downstairs was bullshit.
Mary Wilke: Isn't it beautiful out?
Isaac Davis: Yeah, it's really so pretty when the light starts to come up.
Mary Wilke: Yeah, I know. I love it.
Isaac Davis: Boy, this is really a great city, I don't care what anybody s-s - it's really a knock-out, you know?
Isaac Davis: [after reading his Jill's book about their relationship] I came here to strangle you!
Jill: Nothing I wrote was untrue.
Isaac Davis: You make me out to be Lee Harvey Oswald!
Jill: It's an honest account.
Mary Wilke: I guess I should straighten my life out, huh? I mean, Donnie my analyst is always telling me...
Isaac Davis: You call your analyst Donnie?
Mary Wilke: Yeah, I call him Donnie.
Isaac Davis: Donnie, your analyst? I call mine Dr. Chomsky, y'know, he hits me with a ruler.
Isaac Davis: They probably sit around on the floor with wine and cheese, and mispronounce allegorical and didacticism.
Jeremiah: I'm going to a synposium on semantics.
Isaac Davis: Hit the lights. Go ahead, turn 'em out again. We'll trade fours.
Isaac Davis: You shouldn't ask me for advice. I - when it comes to relationships with women, I'm the winner of the August Strindberg Award.
Emily: Well, I don't think 17 is too young. Beside that, she's a bright girl.
Yale: You'll get no argument from me. I think she's terrific. He could do a lot worse. He has done a lot worse. I just think he's wasting his life. You know, he writes that crap for television.
Isaac Davis: She's got homework. I'm dating a girl who does homework.
Yale: I think the essence of art is to provide a kind of working through the situation for people, you know, so that you can get in touch with feelings that you didn't know you had.
Isaac Davis: Talent is luck.
Yale: What about Isaac? We can't abandon him, you know? He can't function anywhere other than New York, you know that. Very Freudian.
Isaac Davis: You don't wanna get hung up with one person at your age. It's - charming, you know. Erotic. No question about that. As long as the cops don't burst in, we're - I think we're gonna break a couple of records.
Isaac Davis: We're having a great time and all that, but you're a kid and I never want you to forget that. You know, you're gonna meet a lot of terrific men in your life and, you know, I want you to enjoy me. My - my wry sense of humor and astonishing sexual technique, but never forget that, you know, you've got your whole life ahead of you.
