A Taste of Honey (1961)

Rita Tushingham: Jo [Josephine]

Photos 

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Quotes 

• Jo : I feel like throwing myself in the river.

  Geoffrey : I shouldn't do that, it's full of rubbish.

• Geoffrey : The dream is gone.

  Jo : But the baby's real.

• Jo : I hope to be dead and buried by the time I reach your age. Just think, you've been living for forty years.

  Helen : I know, I must be a biological phenomenon.

  Jo : You don't look forty. You look a sort of well-preserved sixty.

• Geoffrey : Do you like me more than you don't like me or do you not like me more than you do?

  Jo : Now you're being Irish.

• Jo : My usual self is a *very* unusual self. I'm an extraordinary person! There's only one of me, like there's only one of you.

  Geoffrey : We're unique.

  Jo : Young.

  Geoffrey : Unrivalled.

  Jo : Smashing.

  Geoffrey : We're bloody marvellous!

• Jo : I'm not sorry and I'm not glad.

• [Jo and her mother have done a moonlight flit to a new house where they have to share a bed] 

  Helen : What's that bed like?

  Jo : It's like a coffin - only half as comfortable.

  Helen : Well, it's where we all end up in the end.

• [having just moved into their new house, there are still cases to be unpacked] 

  Jo : Aren't we gonna clear this luggage up?

  Helen : Oh. it'll look all right in the dark.

  Jo : Yes, it's seen at its best, this room, in the dark.

  Helen : Well, everything's seen at its best in the dark - even me.

• [Geoffrey gives Jo a pamplet which explains to new mothers how to look atfer a baby] 

  Geoffrey : Here. Read this. When the baby comes, you won't know one end of it from the other.

  Jo : "Looking after baby". Isn't that nice? Third month: exercises, relaxation. Fourth month: constipation.

  Geoffrey : Drink that and shut up.

  Jo : I hate milk.

  Geoffrey : Well, get it drunk.

  Jo : Does it tell you how to feed babies, Geoffrey?

  Geoffrey : Even *you* know that.

  Jo : I know about *that* way - breast-feeding. I'm not having a little animal nibbling away at *me*. It's cannibalistic!

  Geoffrey : Stop trying to be inhuman. It doesn't suit you.

• [Jo kicks at a dead bird on a gravestone] 

  Jo : Look at that. It's dead. A bit of love, a bit of lust, and there you are. We don't ask for life. We have it thrust upon us.