- Daniel Hillard: Yeah, my name is Elsa Emmelman, and I want to know how many children do you have.
- Miranda Hillard: I have two girls and a boy.
- Daniel Hillard: Oh, a boy... I don't "werk" with the males, 'cause I used to be one.

Robin Williams - Daniel Hillard
Sally Field - Miranda Hillard

“- Principal Turner: Miss Riley, once in a while a lucky one will get out on a football scholarship. The rest of 'em work in the mines.
- Miss Riley: How 'bout I believe in the unlucky ones? Hmm? I have to, Mister Turner, I'd go out of my mind.”

Chris Ellis - Principal Turner
Laura Dern - Miss Riley

“- Tommy Corn: Little girls like you, they have to work in dark factories where they go blind, for a dollar sixty a month just to make Mommy her pretty shoes. Can you even imagine that, Caitlin?
- Caitlin Corn: I don't want the children to work in factories! Stop it from happening!”

Mark Wahlberg - Tommy Corn
Saige Ryan - Caitlin Corn

“Life is for enjoying, not just getting and working, and getting and working.”
Aidan Quinn - Tom Bledsoe

“I had worked for this old man and once he told me that he had spent his whole life thinking about his career and his work. And he was fifty-two and it suddenly struck him that he had never really given anything of himself. His life was for no one and nothing. He was almost crying saying that.”
Julie Delpy - Céline