Wilma Cameron: Tell me the truth, Homer. Do you want me to forget about you?
Homer Parrish: I want you to be free, Wilma, to live your own life. I don't want you tied down forever just because you've got a kind heart.
Wilma Cameron: Oh, Homer! Why can't you ever understand the way things really are, the way I really feel? I keep trying to tell you.
Homer Parrish: But, but you don't know, Wilma. You don't know what it'd be like to have to live with me. To have to face this
[his hooks]
Homer Parrish: every day, every night.
Wilma Cameron: But I can only find out by trying. And if it turns out I haven't courage enough, we'll soon know it.

- Cathy O'Donnell (as Wilma Cameron) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Wilma Cameron: You wrote me that when you got home, you and I were going to be married. If you wrote that once, you wrote it a hundred times. Isn't that true?
Homer Parrish: Yes, but things are different now.
Wilma Cameron: Have you changed your mind?
Homer Parrish: Have I said anything about changing my mind?
Wilma Cameron: No. That's just it. You haven't said anything about anything... I don't know what to think, Homer. All I know is, I was in love with you when you left and I'm in love with you now. Other things may have changed but that hasn't.

- Cathy O'Donnell (as Wilma Cameron) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Fred Derry: I dreamed I was gonna have my own home. Just a nice little house for my wife and me out in the country... in the suburbs anyway. That's the cock-eyed kind of dream you have when you're overseas.
Peggy Stephenson: You don't have to be overseas to have dreams like that.
Fred Derry: Yeah. You can get crazy ideas right here at home.

- Dana Andrews (as Fred Derry) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Fred Derry: You gotta hand it to the Navy; they sure trained that kid how to use those hooks.
Al Stephenson: They couldn't train him to put his arms around his girl, or to stroke her hair.

- Fredric March (as Al Stephenson) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Al Stephenson: I think that, uh, little story has considerable significance; but I've, uh, I've forgotten what it is.

- Fredric March (as Al Stephenson) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Al Stephenson: I've seen nothing, I should have stayed at home and found out what was really going on.

- Fredric March (as Al Stephenson) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Al Stephenson: We don't need to worry about that child. She can take care of herself.
Milly Stephenson: That's what she thinks.

- Myrna Loy (as Milly Stephenson) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Al Stephenson: You know, I had a dream. I dreamt I was home. I've had that same dream hundreds of times before. This time, I wanted to find out if it's really true. Am I really home?

- Fredric March (as Al Stephenson) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Peggy Stephenson: I've made up my mind.
Al Stephenson: Good girl.
Milly Stephenson: To do what?
Peggy Stephenson: I'm going to break that marriage up! I can't stand it seeing Fred tied to a woman he doesn't love and who doesn't love him. Oh, it's horrible for him. It's humiliating and it's killing his spirit. Somebody's got to help him.

- Teresa Wright (as Peggy Stephenson) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Marie Derry: Say, who is this Peggy Stephenson?
Fred Derry: She's a girl.
Marie Derry: I didn't think she was a kangaroo!

- Virginia Mayo (as Marie Derry) in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)