- Richard Herncastle: I have just this second agreed to be somewhere else.
- Nick Ollanton: I must not have made myself clear enough the other night. You have only one priority while you work for me boy, that to do what I ask. Anybody else plays second fiddle, whoever she is.
- Nick Ollanton: [to Richard Herncastle] I'm not going to sleep with her, lad. I thought that was your department.
- Richard Herncastle: And what are we going to be rehearsing next week?
- Nick Ollanton: A disappearing cyclist. A man rides up to this open doorway, bike goes through, man disappears.
- Richard Herncastle: Who'll be the man?
- Nick Ollanton: You. No objections now or I'll make you disappear altogether.
- Nick Ollanton: Those plankheads, they come pouring into the variety theatres to be flattered, to boo and clap or walk out in protest, to forget the bloody mess they live in outside, everything in the paper they can do nothing about: high class women being forcibly fed just because they want their vote, strikes, lockouts, butchery in Ireland, Germany looking uglier and uglier, filth everywhere. The golden age is gone, lad. We're slithering into a bog, slithering fast, and no-one is stopping us.
- Richard Herncastle: [narrating] Christmas eve - my first away from home. Not that I had a home any more. But Christmas is the time for remembering it - and loneliness stabs like a pain.