- Harry Patterson: You feel the hand of history on your shoulder?
- Tony Blair: Around my throat more like. It's like looking at the promised land with the wrong end of a telescope.
- Martin McGuinness: Politics is a long game, Rory. You have to stay the course. Everything we want, we will get. Maybe not today or tomorrow, it may take another thirty years... believe you me, I would not talk to that old bastard if I didn't think we were going to get there.
- Paisley Junior: [Martin McGuinness is getting into the car beside Ian Paisley Sr] You'll be at the airport in sixty minutes. Just say nothing.
- Ian Paisley: I haven't talked to him in thirty years, another another hour isn't going to be any trouble.
- Martin McGuinness: We are on the verge of something the wider world will applaud, but our own people will hate.
- Martin McGuinness: Just give me the phone, will you? Extend the olive branch.
- Ian Paisley: Well, I'd imagine you'd be more familiar with Special Branch.
- Martin McGuinness: We will fight them on the beaches, so we will.
- Ian Paisley: I had a dream, so I had.
- Martin McGuinness: When did you realize who he was?
- Ian Paisley: From the moment he opened his mouth.
- Martin McGuinness: How did you know?
- Ian Paisley: Because I'm not naive. And also because he claimed never to have heard of me. Everyone's heard of me.
- Ian Paisley: I despise everything you have done, so I do.
- [They firmly shake hands]
- Martin McGuinness: I despise everything you stand for, so I do.
- Harry Patterson: This time is the first time I really felt yes, there is a chance, we can do this.
- Tony Blair: Do you say this to all the prime ministers?
- Harry Patterson: Of course. Only this time I mean it.
- Tony Blair: Why now?
- Harry Patterson: Oh, because... young men fight for the hell of it, but old men care about their legacy.
- Harry Patterson: [about Ian Paisley Sr] Fifty years of marriage... It's rumoured it's the last time he said yes to anything.
- Martin McGuinness: Our protocols dictate that senior figures of opposing parties must fly together. It lessens the chance of either side firing a ground to air missile or...
- Ian Paisley: [Introducing McGuinness to their driver] And this is Martin McGuinness, former chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army.
- Martin McGuinness: Allegedly.
- Jack: I always thought the IRA was led by that guy with a beard and a pipe, you know? So where do you fit in?
- Martin McGuinness: You might call me... the acceptable public face.
- Ian Paisley: [noisily clears his throat]
- Harry Patterson: You are young, aren't you? Twenty five, twenty six... so, old enough that you should know who these men are. They are the Troubles. They are civil war. They are anarchy.
- Ian Paisley: Mr McGuinness, I haven't been to the pictures since 1973.
- Martin McGuinness: Seriously? What did you go to see?
- Ian Paisley: I didn't see anything. I was protesting outside.
- Martin McGuinness: 1973? What would have got your goat in 1973?
- Martin McGuinness: If you don't mind me asking, you don't dance... and you don't drink... so, how did you meet her?
- Ian Paisley: It was the Titanic.
- Martin McGuinness: How old *are* you?
- Martin McGuinness: So what's your position on the great Samuel L. Jackson? Would you shake his hand if we stopped to pick him up?
- Ian Paisley: *Andrew* Jackson was the seventh President of the United States. Was a Presbyterian of good old stock. I would shake his hand. I have absolutely no idea who Samuel L. Jackson is.
- Martin McGuinness: You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you, but we need a leap of faith. And you are all about faith. If you follow your logic, if God has put you here with me, he either means to kiss me or to kill me. And thou shan't kill!
- Tony Blair: What?
- Harry Patterson: Shut his eyes as soon as he got in. Been like that for the last ten minutes.
- Tony Blair: Oh, bloody hell!
- Harry Patterson: He's eighty one. And he hasn't been well.
- Tony Blair: Thatcher operated on four hours sleep and a pact with the devil, Paisley has the energy of ten men half his age. This is just his way of not engaging. Wake him up.