"There'll happen to be a little floor show later on around here. It might get on your nerves... Ever have the DT's?... You will, brother... After all, you're just a freshman. Wait'll you're a sophomore. That's when you start seeing the little animals. You know that stuff about pink elephants? That's the bunk. It's little animals! Little tiny turkeys in straw hats. Midget monkeys coming through the keyholes. See that guy over there? With him it's beetles. Come the night, he sees beetles crawling all over him. Has to be dark though. It's like the doctor was just telling me: delirium is a disease of the night. Good night."

"That's my novel, Nat...I was to start writing it out in the country. Morbid stuff. Nothing for the Book-of-the-Month Club. A horror story! Confessions of a booze addict. The log book of an alcoholic...You know what I'm gonna call my novel? The Bottle. That's all, very simply, The Bottle. I've got it all here in my mind. Let me tell you the first chapter. It all starts one wet afternoon about three years ago. There was a matinee of La Traviata at the Metropolitan..."

"If we let you guys go home alone, a lot of you don't go home. You just hit the nearest bar and bounce right back again. What we call the quick ricochet... This department is sort of a halfway hospital, halfway jail... Listen, I can pick an alkie with one eye shut. You're an alkie. You'll come back. They all do. [gesturing toward other patients] Him, for instance. He shows up every month — just like the gas bill. And the one there with the glasses — another repeater. This is his forty-fifth trip. A big executive in the advertising business. A lovely fellow. Been coming here since 1927 — good ol' Prohibition days. Say, you should have seen the joint then. This is nothing. Back then, we really had a turn-over. Standing-room only. Prohibition. That's what started most of these guys off. Whoopee!"

"It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent, supremely competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michelangelo, molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers — all three of 'em. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer: it's the Nile, Nat, the Nile — and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra."

"The Screen Dares To Open The Strange And Savage Pages Of A Shocking Best-Seller!"

"How daring can the screen dare to be? No adult man or woman can risk missing the startling frankness of The Lost Weekend."

"Paul D'Amato - Sergeant"

"Mady Kaplan - Axel's girl"

"Amy Wright - Bridesmaid"

"Pierre Segui - Julien Grinda"

"Mary Ann Haenel - Stan's girl"

"Meryl Streep - Linda"

"George Dzundza - John Welsh"

"Christopher Walken - Nikonar "Nick" Chevotarevich"

"Chuck Aspegren - Peter "Axel" Axelrod"

"Robert De Niro - Michael "Mike" Vronsky"

"John Cazale - Stanley "Stan" "Stosh""

"John Savage - Steven Pushkov"

"Shirley Stoler - Steven's mother"

"Steven: The place is great...It's like a resort...I mean they got basketball, bowling...Princess Grace came to see us the other day."

"Rutanya Alda - Angela Ludhjduravic-Pushkov"

"Steven's mother: I still do not believe this. My own boy with a strange girl and not so thin, if you understand my meaning...The next thing you know, he goes to Vietnam...I do not understand, Father. I understand nothing anymore, nothing...Can you explain? Can anyone explain?"

"Steven's mother: You marry this girl, you leave her with me, and you go with these bums to Vietnam."

"When a man says no to champagne, he says no to life."

"What is there to be afraid of in this war? The war is a joke, a silly thing...I pay my players - cash - American. However, should you prefer German marks or perhaps Swiss francs, that of course can be arranged."

"If you are really brave and lucky, I can make you very, very rich."

"Nick: Did you hear about the happy Roman? He was "GLAD HE ATE HER"!"

"Okay. Okay!"

"[to Stanley] You wanna play games? All right, I'll play your fucking games."

"[to Linda] I just wanted to say how sorry I am about Nick. And how, I know how much you loved him and I know that it will never be the same. I just wanted to tell you that."

"Linda: I was hoping, somehow Michael, maybe you had Nick with you...He never wrote to me, he never called me."

"Here's to Nick."

"Axel: You're so full of shit, you're gonna float away."

"You want the word on that brother and sister act. Hansel's a fag, and Gretel's got the hots for herself so who cares, right?"

"I don't think I can walk anymore. I've been fallin' down a lot. I'm scared...You know what they do to ya when, when they know you can't, when they find out that you can't walk-walk. Oh Christ."

"You know what you can do with them dishes. And if you ain't man enough to do it for yourself, I'd be happy to oblige. I really would."

"Not bad, not bad for a cowboy. You're OK. You're OK."

"[to Joe] I'm gonna use ya. I'm gonna run you ragged...You and me can have fun together. It doesn't have to be joyless."

"You know, in my own place my name ain't Ratso. I mean, it just so happens that in my own place, my name is Enrico Salvatore Rizzo...At least call me Rico in my own god-damn place."

"The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk. Did you know that? That's a fact. In Florida, they got a terrific amount of coconut trees there. In fact, I think they even got 'em in the, uh, gas stations over there. And ladies? You know that in Miami, you got, uh, you listenin' to me? You got more ladies in Miami than in any resort area in the country there. I think per capita on a given day, there's probably, uh, three hundred of 'em on the beach. In fact, you can't even, uh, scratch yourself without gettin' a belly-button, uh, up the old kazoo there."

"I've prayed on the streets. I've prayed in the saloons. I've prayed in the toilets. It don't matter where, so long as He gets that prayer."

"Lotta rich women back there, Ralph, begging for it, paying for it, too...and the men - they're mostly tutti fruttis. So I'm gonna cash in on some of that, right?...Hell, what do I got to stay around here for? I got places to go, right?"

"End up a hunchback like my old man? If you think I'm crippled, you should have caught him at the end of the day. My old man spent fourteen hours a day down in that subway. He come home at night, two to three hours worth of change stained with shoe polish. Stupid bastard coughed his lungs out from breathin' in that wax all day. Even a faggot undertaker couldn't get his nails clean. They had to bury him with gloves on."

"You know, with proper management, you could be takin' home fifty, maybe a hundred dollars a day, easy."

"The X on the windows means the landlord can't collect rent, which is a convenience, on account of it's condemned."

"HEY! I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here! [bangs hand on car] Up yours, you son-of-a-bitch! You don't talk to me that way! Get outta here! [to Joe] Don't worry about that. Actually, that ain't a bad way to pick up insurance, you know."