Cora Smith: I want to make something of this place, I want to make it into an honest-to-goodness...
Frank Chambers: Well, aren't we ambitious.


--John Garfield (as Frank Chambers) in The Postman Always Rings Twice

Cora Smith: It's too bad Nick took the car.
Frank Chambers: Even if it was here we couldn't take it, unless we'd want to spend the night in jail. Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing a man's car, that's larceny.


--John Garfield (as Frank Chambers) in The Postman Always Rings Twice

Cora Smith: That note I left Nick, if he gets back before we do and finds it...
Frank Chambers: Where'd you leave it?
Cora Smith: In the cash register!
Frank Chambers: That's terrific, that's the first place he'll look.


--John Garfield (as Frank Chambers) in The Postman Always Rings Twice

[about Nick]
Frank Chambers: I'd like to see him get plastered like that some night and drive off a cliff.


--John Garfield (as Frank Chambers) in The Postman Always Rings Twice

[after Joe bails his brother, Doris and the others out of jail]
Doris Lowry: You know I've got my whole life to think about now and you won't be of any help.
Joe Morse: How do you know? You know everything I touch turns to gold. It's raining out and I promised my brother to take you home.
Doris Lowry: Well, that's a lie.
Joe Morse: Well, it's not true; but I would have had he asked. You know you can't tell about your life 'til you're all through living it. Come on, I'll give you a lift. You're tired, I'm tireder. What can happen to either one of us? You tell me the story of your life and maybe I can suggest a happy ending.


--John Garfield (as Joe Morse) in Force of Evil

[last lines - voice over]
Joe Morse: I found my brother's body at the bottom there, where they had thrown it away on the rocks... by the river... like an old dirty rag nobody wants. He was dead - and I felt I had killed him. I turned back to give myself up to Hall; because if a man's life can be lived so long and come out this way - like rubbish - then something was horrible and had to be ended one way or another... and I decided to help.


--John Garfield (as Joe Morse) in Force of Evil

[opening lines - voice over]
Joe Morse: This is Wall Street... and today was important because tomorrow - July Fourth - I intended to make my first million dollars. An exciting day in any man's life. Temporarily, the enterprise was slightly illegal. You see I was the lawyer for the numbers racket.


--John Garfield (as Joe Morse) in Force of Evil

Phil Green: I've been saying I'm Jewish, and it works.
Dave Goldman: Why, you crazy fool! It's working?
Phil Green: It works too well. I've been having my nose rubbed in it, and I don't like the smell.
Dave Goldman: You're not insulated yet, Phil. The impact must be quite a business on you.
Phil Green: You mean you get indifferent to it in time?
Dave Goldman: No, but you're concentrating a lifetime into a few weeks. You're not changing the facts, you're just making them hurt more.


--John Garfield (as Dave Goldman) in Gentleman's Agreement

Harry Morgan: [to Leona as she reaches into his shirt pocket] Yuh know, one day you can get your arm broke reachin' for something that don't belong to yuh.


--John Garfield (as Harry Morgan) in The Breaking Point