Emma Goldman: I think voting is the opium of the masses in this country. Every four years you deaden the pain.
Eugene O'Neill: I'd like to kill you, but I can't. So you can do whatever you want to. Except not see me.
Eugene O'Neill: If you were mine, I wouldn't share you with anybody or anything. It'd be just you and me. We'd be the center of it all. I know it would feel a lot more like love than being left alone with your work.
Eugene O'Neill: You and Jack have a lot of middle-class dreams for two radicals. Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man, whose one dream is to be rich enough not to have to work, into a revolution led by his party. And you dream that if you discuss the revolution with a man before you go to bed with him, it'll be missionary work rather than sex. I'm sorry to see you and Jack so serious about your sports. It's particularly disappointing in you, Louise. You had a lighter touch when you were touting free love.
John Reed: Freedom, Mrs. Trullinger? I'd like to know what your idea of freedom is. Having your own studio? Walk..

Louise Bryant: I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed.
John Reed: Louise, I love you.

Louise Bryant: No, you love yourself! Me, you FUCK!
Louise Bryant: What as?

John Reed: Well, it's almost Thanksgiving. You could go as a turkey.
Speaker - Liberal Club: What is this war about? Each man will have his own answer. I have mine. I'm ready to be called! Now, tonight we have with us the son of Margaret and the late C.J. Reed of Portland, who has withessed this war first-hand. And I, for one, see no reason why we here at the Liberal Club shouldn't listen to what Jack Reed has to say. What would you say this war is about, Jack Reed?

John Reed: [stands up] Profits.

[sits down]
Max Eastman: I'll walk you home.

Emma Goldman: Why? I won't hurt anyone.
[repeated line]

Louise Bryant: Taxi's waiting, Jack.
[repeated line]

Louise Bryant: I write.
Eugene O'Neill: Jack dreams that he can hustle the American working man, who's one dream is that he could be rich enough not to work, into a revolution led by *his* party.
John Reed: All right, Miss Bryant, do you want an interview? Write this down. Are you naïve enough to think containing German militarism has anything to do with this war? Don't you understand that England and France own the world economy and Germany just wants a piece of it? Keep writing, Miss Bryant. Miss Bryant, can't you grasp that J. P. Morgan has loaned England and France a billion dollars? And if Germany wins, he won't get it back! More coffee? America'd be entering the war to protect J. P. Morgan's money. If he loses, we'll have a depression. So the real question is, why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won't lose money?
John Reed: Look, what does a capitalist do? Let me ask you that, Mike. Huh? Tell me. I mean, what does he make, besides money? I don't know what he makes. The workers do all the work, don't they? Well, what if they got organized?
Louise Bryant: Would you rather I not smoke during rehearsal?

Eugene O'Neill: I'd rather you went up in flames than crush out your cigarette during a monologue about birth.
[repeated line]

Eugene O'Neill: Where's the whiskey?
[first lines]

Witness 1: [voiceover] Was that in 1913 or 17? I can't remember now. Uh, I'm, uh, beginning to forget all the people that I used to know, see?

Witness 2: [voiceover] Do I remember Louise Bryant? Why, of course, I couldn't forget her if I tried.
[last lines]

Witness: [voiceover] Of course, nobody goes with the idea of dying, everybody wants to live. I don't remember his exact words, but the meaning was that grand things are ahead, worth living and worth dying for. He himself said that.
[repeated line]

John Reed: You don't get to rewrite what I write.
John Reed: You don't get to rewrite what I write! You don't get to rewrite what I write!

Pete Van Wherry: Stubborn son-of-a-bitch. How are you gonna pay your rent?
John Reed: Zinoviev, you don't think a man can be an individual and be true to the collective, or speak for his own country and speak for the International at the same time, or love his wife and still be faithful to the revolution. You don't have a "self" to give.

Grigory Zinoviev: Would you be willing to give yourself to this revolution?

John Reed: You separate a man from what he loves most, what you do is purge what's unique in him. And when you purge what's unique in him, you purge dissent. And when you purge dissent, you kill the revolution! Dissent IS revolution!
Louise Bryant: [to Eugene O'Neill] Are you nervous, or is that a tremor?
Self - Witness: I think that a guy who's always interested in the condition of the world and changing it, either has no problems of his own or refuses to face them.
Paul Trullinger: Louise, have you taken leave of your senses?

Louise Bryant: Don't be a fool, Paul.

Paul Trullinger: You think I'm a fool because I object to my wife being displayed naked in front of half the people I know.

Louise Bryant: Yes. My God, it's a work of art in a gallery. What's the matter with you? You used to call Portland a stuffy provincial coffin for the mind.

Paul Trullinger: It's stuffy and provincial, but it also happens to be a coffin where I earn a living.

Louise Bryant: You can take your living and fill up teeth with it, because I can earn my own living. I have my work.

Paul Trullinger: Oh, you consider a few articles in the 'Oregonian' and the 'Gazette' work? No, I'll tell you what your work is, Louise. That's making yourself the center of attention. It's shocking Louise Trullinger, emancipated woman of Portland.
Speaker - Liberal Club: Patriotic Americans believe in freedom. And unless we are willing to take arms to defend our heritage, we cannot call ourselves patriotic Americans! I'm proud to be free. I'm proud to be an American.
Louise Bryant: I bet your mother's glad to see you back in Portland.

John Reed: My Mother's glad when I'm not in jail.
John Reed: Economic freedom for women means sexual freedom, and sexual freedom means birth control.
Louise Bryant: All right, wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You want me to come with you to New York?

John Reed: Yes.

Louise Bryant: What as? What as?

John Reed: What do you mean, what as?

Louise Bryant: What as? Your girlfriend?

John Reed: What does that mean?

Louise Bryant: What as? Your girlfriend, your mistress, your paramour, your concubine?

John Reed: Why does it have to be as anything?

Louise Bryant: Because I don't wanna get into some kind of emotional possessive involvement where I'm not able to... I want to know what as.

John Reed: Well, it's nearly Thanksgiving. Why don't you come as a Turkey?
Self - Witness: You know something that I think that there was just as much fucking going on *then* as now. Only now, it has a more perverted quality to it. Now, there's no love whatever included, you know. Then, there was your heart, a bit of heart in it.
John Reed: All I'm saying is that this is not the right time to go to jail for birth control.

Emma Goldman: Oh, there's a right time to go to jail for birth control?
Emma Goldman: The conversation is over. You're a journalist, Jack. When you're a revolutionary, we'll discuss priorities. Hopefully over coffee.
Emma Goldman: Suddenly I'm dogmatic? Why does my status change every time you get a new woman, Jack?
Louise Bryant: Mr. Whigham, are you saying you need Jack's permission to make a pass at me?
John Reed: It's the truth. Does that mean anything around here?

Pete Van Wherry: Well, who the hell's to say what the truth is?
Pete Van Wherry: The IWW's a bunch of Reds. Come on! We got Reds in the IWW, got Reds in the Village. We've got nothing but Reds around here.
Louise Bryant: I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know what my purpose is.

John Reed: Well, tell me what you want.

Louise Bryant: I want to stop needing you!
Louise Bryant: Look at me. Oh, God! I'm like a wife. I'm like a boring, clinging, miserable little wife.
John Reed: Maybe if you took yourself a little more seriously, other people would, too.
John Reed: Why do you even expect to be taken seriously if you're not writing about serious things? I don't understand that.
John Reed: With everything that's happening in the world today, you decide to sit down and write a piece on the influence of the God damned armory show of 1913! Are people supposed to take that seriously?
Louise Bryant: He has the freedom to do the things that he wants to and so do I. And I think anyone who's afraid of that kind of freedom is really only afraid of his own emptiness.

Eugene O'Neill: Are you making this up as you go along?
Louise Bryant: I don't want to be patronized. I'm sorry if you don't believe in mutual independence and free love and respect.

Eugene O'Neill: Don't give me a lot of parlor socialism that you learned in the Village.
Louise Bryant: Jack and I are both perfectly capable of living with our beliefs. But I think someone as romantic as you would be destroyed by them. And I don't want that to happen. It would upset Jack too much.
Louise Bryant: [singing] I don't want to play in your yard, I don't like you anymore, You'll be sorry when you see me, Sliding down our cellar door, You can't holler down our rain barrel, You can't climb our apple tree, I don't want to play in your yard, If you won't be good to me
Eugene O'Neill: You left without saying goodbye. That's not like you, not that I have the slightest idea what you're like.
Louise Bryant: Gene, Jack and I, we haven't told anyone yet because we were too embarrassed. But we're married. Jack and I got married.

Eugene O'Neill: That is embarrassing.
Eugene O'Neill: You're a lying Irish whore from Portland and you used me to get Jack Reed to marry you.
Louise Bryant: Who was it?

John Reed: What do you want, a list?
Pete Van Wherry: Bolsheviks, Sandy! The Bolsheviks! Jesus Christ, if the Bolsheviks get in, Sandy, you can just bend right over and kiss your ass goodbye.
Pete Van Wherry: You want to walk down the Champs-Elysées someday and see 500,000 Krauts come barreling out of Fouquet's? You better hope that the Bolsheviks are small potatoes. Now, let's have another drink. Waiter!
Pete Van Wherry: Hey! Oh, God. It's Red Emma, Jr.! Hey, come over here!
Pete Van Wherry: You bet your sweet patoosie, that's Sarsaparilla with ice.
Louise Bryant: Excuse me. Excuse me, now here's the thing. I'd be a God damned fool not to take you up on this offer. So, here's what I want. I want to sign my own name to my own stories and I don't want to use a double byline. I want to be responsible for my own time and my own actions. I want to be referred to as Miss Bryant, and not Mrs. Reed, and I want to keep an account of every cent we spend so that I can pay you back. Now, I assume you know that I'm not going to sleep with you, so just don't confuse the issue by bringing it up. That's it.

John Reed: Fine.

Louise Bryant: Good.

Joe Volski: You like salami?
Allan Benson: A man then asks, "Why do you let your beard grow?" He says, "I want to remember what I ate yesterday."
John Reed: There's a foreman of a logging camp, he's trying to hire a crew. You know, and he goes down a long line of very big men and he gets to a little man in the back and he says, "Who the hell are you? What're you doing here? Don't you know that I need men who can chop down dozens of trees a day? Where the hell have you ever worked before?" And the little man says, "Well, I worked in the Sahara forest." And the foreman says, "You mean the Sahara desert." And the little man says, "Yes, sure, now!"
Allan Benson: A woman knocks at the door of her neighbor. She says, "My husband just died. I want to sell his jacket." He says, "What's the matter with the pants?" She says, "The pants, I wear."
John Reed: I'm sort of braising the cabbage. 'Cause I thought it'd be a nice change. You know that house where Rhys Williams is staying? Evidently, the banker's daughter came home in hysterics the other night, 'cause some woman streetcar conductor called her "Comrade." So after dinner, they all voted they preferred the Germans to the Bolsheviks by 10-to-1. Anyway, the social revolutionaries asked the British ambassador to please not to mention their visit, because they were already considered too far to the right. And, you know, it's the same group of people you couldn't even see a year ago, 'cause they were too far to the left. Karsavina is dancing tonight. And, oh, Manny Komroff says that Charlie Chaplin movie...

Louise Bryant: [interupts] Jack - thanks for bringing me here.
Louise Bryant: On the subject of decency, Senator, the Bolsheviks took power with the slogan, "an end to the war." Within six months, they made good their promise to the Russian people. Now, the present President of the United States of America went to this country in 1916, on a "no war" ticket. Within six months, he'd taken us into the war, and 115,000 young Americans didn't come back. If that's how decent, God-fearing Christians behave, give me atheists anytime.
Louise Bryant: By the way, Senator Overman, in Russia, women have the *vote*, which is more than you can say for this country.
Self - Witness: We all have problems. You can't escape having problems, don't you know? But to take on the problem of all humanity, to save all humanity, my god, that was too big even for Jesus Christ. Don't you know he got himself crucified? How the hell do we expect to do those things?
John Reed: You thought, you thought, you thought. Try not to think too much, Eddie. Not when your comrades are depending on you.
Max Eastman: You know, I think we all believe in the same things. But with us, it's more or less our good intentions. And with Jack, it's a religion. Our old friend Jack's getting serious on us.
Louise Bryant: Let me make it easy for you, Jack. I'm not going with you. And if you go, I'm not sure I'll be here when you get back.

John Reed: Louise, you know, the Comintern doesn't know Edmund or Alfred from the New York Yankees. They know me. Somebody's got to go over there who's got a background.
John Reed: These people can barely speak English. They don't even want to be integrated into American life. The Foreign Language Federations aren't gonna create Bolshevism in America any more than eating borscht will.
John Reed: Do you think the American workers are gonna be led by the Russian Federations? Or an insular Italian like Louis Fraina? He has no possibility of leading a revolution in this country.

Louise Bryant: Unlike you?

John Reed: I'm just saying that the revolution in this country is not gonna be led by immigrants.

Louise Bryant: Revolution? In this country? When, Jack?
John Reed: I have to go.

Louise Bryant: You don't have to go. You want to go. You want to go running all over the world ranting and raving and making resolutions and organizing caucuses. What's the difference between the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party except that you're running one and he's running the other?

John Reed: I've made a commitment.

Louise Bryant: To what? To the fine distinction between which half of the left of the left is recognized by Moscow as the real Communist Party in America? To petty political squabbling between humorless and hack politicians just wasting their time on left-wing dogma? To getting the endorsement of a committee in Russia you call the international for your group of 14 intellectual friends in the basement who are supposed to tell the workers of this country what they want, whether they want it or not? Write, Jack. You're not a politician, you're a writer. And your writing has done more for the revolution than 20 years of this infighting can do, and you know it.
[repeated line]

John Reed: I'll be back by Christmas.
Louise Bryant: Gene, if you'd been to Russia, you'd never be cynical about anything again. You would have seen people transformed. Ordinary people.

Eugene O'Neill: Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual's eyes shine and they start to talk to me about the Russian people.

Louise Bryant: Wait.

Eugene O'Neill: Something in me says, "watch it." A new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith."

Louise Bryant: It's not like that.

Eugene O'Neill: And I wonder why a lovely wife like Louise Reed who's just seen the brave new world is sitting around with a cynical bastard like me instead of trotting all over Russia with her idealistic husband. It's almost worth being converted.
Louise Bryant: Boy, you've become quite the critic, haven't you, gene? Just leaned back and analyzed us all. Duplicitous women who tout free love and then get married, power-mad journalists who join the revolution instead of observing it, middle-class radicals who come looking for sex and then talk about Russia. It must seem so contemptible to a man like you who has the courage to sit on his ass and observe human inadequacy from the inside of a bottle. Well, I've never seen you do anything for anyone. I've never seen you give anything to anyone, so I can understand why you might suspect the motives of those who have. But whatever Jack's motives are, how...

Eugene O'Neill: I seem to have touched a wound.
Government Agent: I don't suppose there's a chance of you being a Bolshevik agitator, is there?

Louise Bryant: Why don't you just look around, and see how agitated you get?
Grigory Zinoviev: Clarity does not necessarily guarantee endorsement.
John Reed: I must see my wife. It's very urgent, and I ask only for a single place on a train.

Grigory Zinoviev: But you have a place on the train! You have a place on the train of this revolution. You have been like so many others, the best revolutionaries. One of the engineers on the locomotive of this train that pulls this revolution on the tracks of historical necessity laid out for it by the party. You can't leave us now. We can't replace you. What right do you have to leave?

John Reed: I'm not sure.

Grigory Zinoviev: To do what? To see your wife?
Grigory Zinoviev: Comrade Reed, you can always go back to your private responsibilities, so can I. You can never, never come back to this moment in history.
Emma Goldman: If Louise were to come here, she'd have to leave the United States illegally, then live in exile with you, and never go home again. All for the sake of a revolution she was never any part of. Why should she? You chose the life of a revolutionary. She didn't.
John Reed: Why hasn't she answered me?

Emma Goldman: I think she has answered you.
Emma Goldman: Jack, I think we have to face it. The dream that we had is dying in Russia. If Bolshevism means the peasants taking the land, the workers taking the factories, Russia's one place where there's no Bolshevism.
John Reed: You know, I can argue with cops, I can fight with generals. I can't deal with a bureaucrat.
Emma Goldman: The Soviets have no more local autonomy. The central state has all the power. All the power is in the hands of a few men and they are destroying the revolution. They are destroying any hope of real communism in Russia. They're putting people like me in jail. My understanding of revolution is not a continual extermination of political dissenters, and I want no part of it. Every single newspaper's been shut down or taken over by the party. Anyone even vaguely suspected of being a counter-revolutionary can be taken out and shot without a trial. Where does that end? Is any nightmare justifiable in the name of defense against counter-revolution?
John Reed: What did you think this thing was gonna be? A revolution by consensus where we all sat down and agreed over a cup of coffee?

Emma Goldman: Nothing works. Four million people died last year. Not from fighting a war, they died from starvation and typhus in a militaristic police state that suppresses freedom and human rights where nothing works.
John Reed: It's not happening the way we thought it would. It's not happening the way we wanted it to, but it's happening.
Grigory Zinoviev: Aren't you propagandist enough to utilize what moves people most?

John Reed: I'm propagandist enough to utilize the *truth*.

Grigory Zinoviev: And who defines this truth? You or the party?
John Reed: [delirious] The water plays little songs.
John Reed: Well, I want to go home.
Witness: He was asked by Lenin, "Are you an American?" He said, "Yes." And Lenin said, "An *American* American?" And Reed said, "Yes."
Mrs. Partlow: Are you Paul Trullinger's wife?

Louise Bryant: Yes. Yes, I am.

Mrs. Partlow: Well, isn't that something? Well, he did Frank Rhodes' bridge. Oh, Mrs. Trullinger, your husband's the finest dentist in all of Portland.

Louise Bryant: Thank you very much.

John Reed: Really?

Mrs. Partlow: And I think he did a plate for Uncle Grover.
Louise Bryant: You're not married, are you?

John Reed: No, I don't think I believe in marriage. Are you married?

Louise Bryant: Marriage? How could anyone believe in marriage?