Richard Burton credited as playing...
T. Laurance Shannon
- 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.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Miss Fellowes is a highly moral person. If she ever recognized the truth about herself it would destroy her.
- 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.
- 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: 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.
- 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.
- 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: 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: There are worse things than chastity, Mr. Shannon.
- T. Laurance Shannon: Yes: lunacy and death.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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: [as the disatisfied Ms. Fellowes runs to speak to Shannon] Look at her, charging like a bull elephant on a rampage.
- 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!
