- T. Laurance Shannon: Miss Fellowes is a highly moral person. If she ever recognized the truth about herself it would destroy her.
- Maxine Faulk: What the hell are you doing, Shannon?
- T. Laurance Shannon: I just cut loose one of God's creatures at the end of his rope.
- Maxine Faulk: What for?
- T. Laurance Shannon: So that one of God's creatures could be free from panic, and scamper home safe and free. A little act of grace, Maxine.
- T. Laurance Shannon: I thought you were sexless. But you've just become a woman. You know how I know that? Because you, not me, are taking pleasure in my being tied up. All women, whether they want to face it or not, want to see a man in a tied-up situation. They spend their lives trying to get a man into a tied-up situation. Their lives are fulfilled when they can get a man or as many men as they can, into a tied-up situation.
- Hannah Jelkes: Who wouldn't like to atone for the sins of themselves, and the world, if it could be done in a hammock with ropes, instead of on a Cross, with nails? On a green hilltop, instead of Golgotha, the Place of the Skulls? Isn't that a comparatively comfortable, almost voluptuous Crucifixion to suffer for the sins of the world, Mr. Shannon?
- T. Laurance Shannon: I want to explain something to you... A man has got just so much in his emotional bank balance. Mine has run out. It's stone dry. I can't draw a check on it. There's nothing left to draw out.
- Nonno: Oh courage! Could you not as well / Select a second place to dwell / Not only in that golden tree / But in the frightened heart of me?
- Judith Fellowes: [yelling at Shannon] You thought you outwitted me, didn't you, having your paramour here cancel my call.
- Maxine Faulk: Miss Fellowes, honey, if paramour means what I think it does, you're gambling with your front teeth.
- Maxine Faulk: What... uh... subject do you teach back in that college of yours, honey?
- Judith Fellowes: Voice... if that's got anything to do with it.
- Maxine Faulk: Well geography is my speciality. Did you know that if it wasn't for the *dykes*, the plains of Texas would be engulfed by the gulf?
- T. Laurance Shannon: Maxine!
- Maxine Faulk: Let's level for awhile, butch, old gal, you know what you're sore about? What you're really sore about? That little quail of yours has a natural preference for *men*! Instead of...
- T. Laurance Shannon: Maxine!
- Judith Fellowes: What is she talking about?
- T. Laurance Shannon: You better go now, Miss Fellowes, the party's over. Right now I'm no longer in a position to discharge my responsibility of protecting you. A responsibility from which you discharged me. Just go, Miss Fellowes. Just go.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Nothing could be worse for a girl in your unstable condition, to be mixed up with a man in, in my unstable condition because two people in unstable conditons are like two countries facing each other in unstable conditons. The, eh, destructive potential, eh, could blow the whole world to bits!
- Maxine Faulk: Even I know the difference between lovin' somebody, and just goin' to bed with them. Even I know that.
- T. Laurance Shannon: You can't go on all alone. Think of how it will feel after so many years.
- Hannah Jelkes: I shall know how it feels when I feel it.
- T. Laurance Shannon: The Fantastic Level and the Realistic Level are the two levels upon which we live.
- Maxine Faulk: Well she's done a pretty good job of destroying you!
- T. Laurance Shannon: Maxine, don't rob me of the credit for my own small accomplishments.
- Maxine Faulk: So you appropriated the young chick and the old hens are squawking, huh?
- T. Laurance Shannon: It's very serious. The child is emotionally precocious.
- Maxine Faulk: Bully for her.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Also, she is traveling under the wing of a military escort of a butch vocal teacher.
- Hannah Jelkes: I'm a human being. And when one of that unique species builds its nest in the heart of another, the questions of permanence and propagation aren't the first or even the last things to be considered. What is important - is that one is never alone.
- Hannah Jelkes: When I was sixteen, every Saturday I would go to the Saturday matinee at the Nantucket Movie Theater. That was soon after my parents were killed in an automobile accident and I was very alone. Well, one day a young man sat down beside me and pushed his knee against mine. I moved over; but, he moved over too and continued the pressure. I jumped up and screamed - and he was arrested for molesting a minor.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Is he still in the Nantucket jail?
- Hannah Jelkes: No. No, I got him out. I told the police it was a Garbo picture. It was a Garbo picture and that I was just overexcited.
- Hannah Jelkes: There are worse things than chastity, Mr. Shannon.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Yes: lunacy and death.
- T. Laurance Shannon: I'm panicking!
- Hannah Jelkes: I know that.
- T. Laurance Shannon: A man can die of panic!
- Hannah Jelkes: Not when he enjoys it as much as you do, Dr. Shannon.
- Hannah Jelkes: I can't stand for a person I respect to behave like a small, cruel boy.
- T. Laurance Shannon: And what do you respect in me, Miss Thin Standing-up Female Buddha?
- [last lines]
- Maxine Faulk: Why don't we go down to the beach?
- T. Laurance Shannon: I can get down the hill, Maxine, but I'm not too sure about getting back up.
- Maxine Faulk: I'll get you back up, baby. I'll always get you back up.
- Maxine Faulk: When I hired them beach boys, did Fred care? Did he raise hell when I started going night swimming with them? Hell no. He just went night fishing all night long.
- Hannah Jelkes: We make a home for each other, my grandfather and I. Oh, I don't mean a regular home; because, I don't regard a home as a - place, a building, bricks, wood, stone. I think of a home - as something two people have between them. In which each can - nest, rest, live in - emotionally speaking.
- T. Laurance Shannon: [as the disatisfied Ms. Fellowes runs to speak to Shannon] Look at her, charging like a bull elephant on a rampage.
- Maxine Faulk: What's this mess supposed to be?
- Chang: Soup.
- Maxine Faulk: Well, it's burnt!
- Maxine Faulk: [after walking over to Chang, who is smoking marijuana] Chang... I've warned you before. I don't allow this stuff on the premises, even if you're on vacation. You remember the time you got it in the enchiladas?
- Maxine Faulk: [to Miss Fellowes] Well, if you're not going to eat him, I'd better go see about food for dinner.
- Tourist Teacher #3: My brother in Abilene... has a chain of twenty-three laundromats. He says all he wants on his tombstone is: he liberated the women of Texas from the bondage of washing.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Where's Fred?
- Maxine Faulk: Dead.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Did you say dead?
- Maxine Faulk: That's what I said. Fred's dead.
- T. Laurance Shannon: I thought Fred could tame them. He was a fisherman and I've got a busload of man-eating sharks.
- Hannah Jelkes: Just rest for a few moments Nonno.
- Nonno: How calmly does the olive branch, Observe the sky begin to blanch, Without a cry, without a prayer, With no betrayal of despair...
- Maxine Faulk: [with admiration] Miss Jelkes, honey, you're a hustler! A fantastic, cool hustler! You're completely broke, huh?
- Hannah Jelkes: Yes, we are. Completely.
- T. Laurance Shannon: I said to this girl, I said, "Let us, let us kneel down and pray together." And we did. We knelt. And then all of the sudden the - kneeling position turned into a reclining position.
- Maxine Faulk: All right, honey, calm down.
- Hannah Jelkes: I am perfectly calm, Mrs. Faulk.
- Maxine Faulk: Well, I'm not! That's the trouble. The trouble is Shannon. I caught the vibrations between you two.
- Hannah Jelkes: Mrs. Faulk, I'm a New England spinster who is pushing forty.
- Maxine Faulk: Well, who the hell isn't!
- Hannah Jelkes: Mr. Shannon, cut him loose!
- T. Laurance Shannon: All right. We'll play God tonight, like kids play houses with old broken crates and boxes. We'll cut the damn lizard loose so he can go back to his bushes, cause God won't do it and we are playing God here tonight.
- Judith Fellowes: [to Charlotte] Dreadful girl. You defied me. You deliberately defied me.
- [Miss Fellowes slaps Charlotte across the face after which Charlotte leaves]
- T. Laurance Shannon: What did you think we were doing out there, Miss Fellowes? Spawning?
- Judith Fellowes: Oh, you beast. You beast!
- Judith Fellowes: [sobbing] You beast!
- T. Laurance Shannon: [talking to Maxine] I wonder how long it takes to sweat the faculty of a Baptist Female College out of a bus that's parked in the sun when it's a hundred degrees in the shade.
- T. Laurance Shannon: [to Charlotte] You're as dangerous as you are young and lovely. And it's you're being young and lovely that makes you so dangerous, that gives you this destructive potential over a destructible man.
- T. Laurance Shannon: I wonder as we examine our hearts together, in this place set aside for worship, how many of us here can say, "I rule my own spirit." For, how weak is man? How often do we - how often - how often do we stray from the straight and narrow? For only when we abide in the Lord are we like cities without walls. Only then can we defend ourselves against Satan and his temptations. We cannot rule ourselves alone.
- T. Laurance Shannon: I will not and cannot continue to conduct services in praise and worship of this angry, petulant old man in whom you believe. You've turned your backs on the God of love and compassion and invented for yourselves this cruel, senile, delinquent who blames the world and all that he created for his own faults! Close your windows. Close your doors! Close your hearts - against the truth of our God!
- Charlotte Goodall: That boy back home told me that I had skin that no girl had any right to. He said you should be licensed to have skin as soft as mine. Wasn't it silly of him?
- T. Laurance Shannon: No. Yes. No. No. It should be licensed. I mean, at least until you're old enough for a - a driver's license. Now, you get out of my room. Would you get off my bed! I-I'll keep my eyes shut until you've gone out of my room.
- Charlotte Goodall: Have I grown up too early, Larry?
- T. Laurance Shannon: Yes. No! I mean, yes. Yes. Lord, lead me not unto temptation. Now, go on home and find my way all by myself.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Maxine, you got to help me with her, honey. She's not only trying to get me fired, she's also trying to pin on me a rape charge, a charge of statutory rape.
- Maxine Faulk: What's statutory rape? I've never known what that was.
- T. Laurance Shannon: That's when a man is seduced by a girl under twenty.
- Judith Fellowes: Seducer!
- T. Laurance Shannon: What?
- Judith Fellowes: Seducer!
- T. Laurance Shannon: Now what's the squawk now?
- Maxine Faulk: I know what you're up to, honey. You want to make yourself useful so I'll let you and old Gramps stay on here free.
- Hannah Jelkes: Oh, I wouldn't do anything so obvious - not with a woman of your practicality.
- Maxine Faulk: I loved old Fred. Wouldn't anybody guess the way I carried on; except, Fred. He knew. You see, he was twenty-eight years older than me and we hadn't slept together in I don't know when. Fred used to say - I guess he was impotent. But, if you ask me, honey, he just plain lost interest.
- Hannah Jelkes: What - other interests did he have, Mrs. Faulk.
- Maxine Faulk: Only fishing. He'd catch 'em and throw 'em back in. Unless he swallowed the hook and then we'd have 'em for supper. Fred lived and let lived.
- Maxine Faulk: I remember one time, he came down here out of season, like now. And I went on the make for him. But, Shannon wasn't having any, on account of his friendship with Fred.
- Hannah Jelkes: [referring to fish she is preparing] Well, they're all ready for steaming.
- Maxine Faulk: So was I, Miss Jelkes. So was I! But I couldn't tell him that Fred didn't give a damn. It didn't seem fair to Fred.
- Hannah Jelkes: You know I think you're quite a remarkable person too, Mrs... Faulk.
- Maxine Faulk: Don't you try to con me, honey. I understand men. But, I still got my biological urges.