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Marion: What makes a song beautiful is not always the quality of the voice but the distance that voice has had to travel.
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Arthur Harris: You know how I feel about enjoying things.
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Doctor: Chips and ice cream, Marion. Someone told me once, when there's nothing you can do, chips and ice cream. Go home and have as much as you want.
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Arthur Harris: [Marion wants to go outside in her pyjamas to say hello to the choir who have come to sing outside her bedroom window] You can't make a show of yourself like that.
Marion: They're my friends. They don't care what I look like. Neither do I. I want to see them.
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Arthur Harris: You lot are all lunatics. What will people think when they hear you singing this?
Elizabeth: It's only a song, Arthur. It's about sex. Oh, dear. People do still have it, you know.
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Cheryl: I play recorder.
Elizabeth: Recorder's not really rock and roll.
Cheryl: It is when I play it.
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[Standing at Marion's grave]
Arthur Harris: Potatoes. Two pints of milk. Teabags. Chicken. Sage and onions. Bottle of bleach. That's the shopping. That's what I'm doing today. OK.
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Elizabeth: Do you need any help with anything?
Arthur Harris: Anything like what? I don't do anything. I used to get up for her.
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[Reading out a poem he wrote in front of the choir]
Timothy: Marion came here to sing / A wheelchair she did bring / She sang with such a smile / That made it not a trial / The great thing about Marion / Is that she gave us the strength to carry on.
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Arthur Harris: Shouldn't you be talking to somebody your own age?
Elizabeth: That's it, I dont... I don't have any friends my own age.
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Arthur Harris: It was a miracle that Marion and I met at all. We were so different. She had such faith in life. She'd say: "There's somebody out there for *everybody*. Look at us."
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Elizabeth: Sometimes you find a flower you can help to bloom. Maybe you're one of those flowers.
Arthur Harris: Yeah, poison ivy.
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Elizabeth: I was engaged for a couple of years to a fly boy, a pilot. Never commit yourself to a man in uniform, Arthur, especially if he's surrounded by lots of air hostesses.
Arthur Harris: All men are shits, aren't they?
Elizabeth: I look forward to meeting one who isn't. Present company excluded.
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Elizabeth: [Showing Arthur the leaflet for the upcoming choir competition] We're in the programme now. There's no turning back.
Arthur Harris: Yeah. If we jump ship, there'll be nobody to come last.
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James: What am I supposed to make of you? Every time I see you...
[shrugs his shoulders]
James: I don't know what it is I've done or not done in my life to make you so disappointed. I mean, I've achieved so many things, so many good things, but you're always disappointed. Why can't you be proud?
Arthur Harris: I am proud, son.
James: Well, you never thought once to tell me.
Arthur Harris: Well, I tell everybody.
James: Why don't you tell me?
Arthur Harris: I'm trying now.
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Elizabeth: Maybe we saved ourselves from getting laughed at by a theatre full of people.
Arthur Harris: Somebody once told me it didn't matter if you got laughed at.
Unfinished Song Quotes
Extended Reading