- Stephen: Um, language is my mother, my father, my husband, my brother, my sister, my whore, my mistress, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Um, language is the breath of God. Language is the dew on a fresh apple. It's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning light as you pluck from an old bookshelf a half-forgotten book of erotic memoirs. Language is the creak on a stair, it's a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party. It's the warm, wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy. Uh, the hulk of a charred panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl. Uh, it's cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.
- Various Characters: Hold the news reader's nose squarely waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.