Amy Herzog

VERA: Have I told you about the lesbian who tried to seduce / me?

EMMA: Yes.

VERA: She showed up at the house, saying she has suck a big, whaddayacallit.

EMMA: Clitoris.

VERA: Clitoris, right, and she said it would be terrific, and all that. And I said no thank you, and she went away. Nice woman. Very pretty, actually.

BEN: Now who are the people speaking up on behalf of the destitute? The American Communist Party. Who is talking about racial equality, twenty-five years before the Civil Rights movement? Same answer. Who is calling attention to the fact that Russians are dying by the millions fighting fascism so that American hands can stay clean? Same answer, Emma. So who is my dad’s allegiance to? Is it to J. Edgar Fucking Hoover? Is it to a president who fully intends to sell out the Soviets once Hitler is out of the way? No, it’s to his party, it’s to the honest working-class Russians who are dying so that he can be free. So that his kids, and their kids, that’s you, could be free.

MORTY: Mostly we’re talking about nothing, we’re talking about, I don’t know, a good recipe for soap. You have a good recipe for soap, you mention it to somebody else in the Party, next thing you know you’re meeting a guy named Nikolai on a bench, handing over your soap recipe so some Russian kids can have a nice bath. This is the kind of thing that would later be called “spying,” and for these people life would become hell.