Cora Lister: [Flashback scene: Tom Lister is in his prison cell, recalling how he had given his wife Cora an exquisite fur coat] Tom... oh, Tom! It's the most beautiful thing in the whole world!
Tom Lister: It belongs on you.
Cora Lister: [Putting the coat on and admiring herself dreamily in the mirror] It makes me feel so... I don't know... like I was "somebody." Oh, Tom...
Cora Lister: [Suddenly coming to her senses] Where'd you get it? Where'd the money come from? Where'd you get it!
Tom Lister: Cora, I stole the money. I juggled the books and took three thousand dollars.
Cora Lister: You? You STOLE? Why?
Tom Lister: Darling, the way we were going, you wanting things - things you ought to have - and me strapped all the time... we were heading for a split-up. Don't you see? I just had to do it.
Cora Lister: All my life, the one thing I've really wanted is a fur coat. I CAN'T give it up. I WON'T, Tom!
Tom Lister: No, darling...
Cora Lister: But what if something should happen?
Tom Lister: Nothing that happens could matter, unless I lost you...
[Loud, ominous knocking on door is heard, returning the scene back to Tom's prison cell]

Muggsy: [Inmate Muggsy, accompanied by prison guard Hodges, walking across the prison yard] You know, the way I got it figured out...
Hodges: Make sense. What are you trying to say?
Muggsy: Well, uh, I gotta' favor to pose you.
Hodges: Don't ask me no favors. I can't be bribed, see? Besides, you ain't got enough dough to bribe me.

Muggsy: [Looking up at the prison drawbridge] I was once married to a dame like that.
Hodges: What are you talkin' about?
Muggsy: Wonderful structure. But up in the air most of the time.

Spencer: You know, I was just thinking. An insurance company could go flat broke in this prison.

Joe Collins: [Spencer is wavering about whether to join in with Joe's escape plan] Spencer. In or out? No guarantees go with this break. It's all or nothing. But you've gotta' make up your mind now. Now! Either way, no hard feelings.
Spencer: [after long, thoughtful pause] With you, Joe. I'll play along.
Robert 'Soldier' Becker: I never thought different.
Spencer: Neither did I.

Joe Collins: [Trying to convince Gallagher that escape from the prison is possible, in spite of the fact that they both realize that in the past, somewhat misguided inmates have attempted to do so] Look, Gallagher, I know this drum's full of crackpots. One convict's gonna' buy his way out, another knows the governor's cousin. A third guy's even gonna' float out in a homemade balloon. But I'm not buyin' any pipe dreams. It can be done. It's been done before, and it'll be done again. It can be done here... by us.
Gallagher: Collins, if I ever put in with anybody, it'll be with you.

Gallagher: Those gates only open three times. When you come in, when you've served your time, or when you're dead!

Gallagher: It'll only make things tougher for everybody else.
Joe Collins: I don't care about everybody else.
Gallagher: That's cemetery talk.
Joe Collins: Why not, we're buried, ain't we? Only thing is, we ain't dead.