Unfinished Song Quotes

  • Marion: What makes a song beautiful is not always the quality of the voice but the distance that voice has had to travel.

  • Arthur Harris: You know how I feel about enjoying things.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Cheryl: I play recorder.

    Elizabeth: Recorder's not really rock and roll.

    Cheryl: It is when I play it.

  • [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.

  • 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.

  • [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.

  • 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.

  • 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."

  • Elizabeth: Sometimes you find a flower you can help to bloom. Maybe you're one of those flowers.

    Arthur Harris: Yeah, poison ivy.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.