- [Halliwell puts his hand on Orton's leg. Orton brushes it off]
- Joe Orton: No. Have a wank.
- Kenneth Halliwell: Have a wank? Have a wank? I can't just have a wank. I need three days' notice to have a wank. You can just stand there and do it. Me, it's like organizing D-Day. Forces have to be assembled, magazines bought, the past dredged for some suitably unsavoury episode, the dog-eared thought of which can still produce a faint flicker of desire! Have a wank, it'd be easier to raise the Titanic.
- Kenneth Halliwell: I can't remember when you last touched my cock. Well, I can actually. It was about two years ago. Only I can't remember the actual date. Pity. I could have put it in my diary. "The last time Joe touched my cock. Grouse shooting begins"
- Peggy Ramsay: Ken was the first wife. He did all the work and the waiting and then...
- John Lahr: Well, first wives don't usually beat their husbands' heads in.
- Peggy Ramsay: No. Though why I can't think.
- John Lahr: So what does that make you? The second wife?
- Peggy Ramsay: Better than that, dear. The widow.
- Kenneth Halliwell: I just want to go to the awards! I could! Look, "Joe Orton and guest." I'd behave. I wouldn't say a word, I promise.
- Joe Orton: No.
- Kenneth Halliwell: Why?
- Joe Orton: Because it's for me. I wrote it.
- Kenneth Halliwell: I gave you the title.
- Joe Orton: Okay, so when they have awards for titles, you can go to that.
- Mrs. Sugden: Do you notice I'm limping? Spilled a hot drink down my dress. My vagina came up like a football.
- Brian Epstein: [discussing Joe's screenplay for a movie starring The Beatles] If the boys are all in bed with Susan, this means, as I understand it, that they are all in bed with each other. No, no, no, no, no, no.
- Joe Orton: Why?
- Brian Epstein: Why? Because these are normal, healthy boys.
- Joe Orton: I take it they all sleep together.
- Brian Epstein: They do not.
- Joe Orton: Oh, they're all very pretty. I imagined they just had a good time. Sang, smoked, fucked everything in sight, including each other. I thought that was what success meant.
- Brian Epstein: Mr. Orton, success means... well, it means a respect for the public. Besides one of the boys is happily married.
- Leonie Orton: [mixing Joe and Kenneth's ashes] I think I'm putting in more of Joe than I am of Kenneth.
- Peggy Ramsay: It's a gesture, dear, not a recipe.
- Kenneth Halliwell: At least you can say you've sat in the same chair as T.S. Eliot.
- Joe Orton: Yes, I'm never going to wipe my bum again.
- Peggy Ramsay: At moments of triumph, men can do without their wives... But sharing is what wives want.
- Joe Orton: [accepting a drama award] My plays are about getting away with it, and the ones who get away with it are the guilty ones. It's the innocents who get it in the neck. But that all seems pretty true to life to me. Not a fantasy at all. I've got away with it *so far*
- [hoisting trophy]
- Joe Orton: and I'm going to go on.
- [Joe and Kenneth are in court, being charged with defacing library books]
- Counsil: This is the novel "Clouds of Witness" by the noted authoress Dorothy L. Sayers. Could you read what the accused have written on the flap of the jacket?
- Policeman: [reading] When little Betty McDree says she has been interfered with, her mother first laughs. It is only something the kiddie has picked up off the television. But when, sorting through the laundry, Mrs. McDree discovers a new pair of knickers are missing, she thinks again. Her mother takes little Betty to the police station where, to everyone's surprise, she identifies PC Brenda Coolidge as her attacker. A search is made of the women's police barracks. What is found there is a seven inch phallus and a pair of knickers of the type used by Betty. All looks black for kindly PC Coolidge. This is one of the most enthralling stories ever written by Miss Sayers. Read it behind closed doors... and have a good shit while you're reading it.
- Kenneth Halliwell: I don't understand my life. I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was 20 I was going bald. I'm a homosexual. In the way of circumstances and background I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint. I was programmed to be a novelist or a playwright. But I'm not and you are! Joe, you do everything better than me! You even sleep better than me!
- Kenneth Halliwell: [preparing to dictate an offensive letter] Seat yourself at our trusty Remington, John, and we shall piss on this person from a great height.
- [Orton is having his portrait painted, naked]
- Joe Orton: When I die I want people to say, 'He was the most perfectly developed playwright of his day.'
- [Paul McCartney is going to visit and Joe and Kenneth are tidying frantically]
- Kenneth Halliwell: This is what it must be like when one meets the Queen!
- Joe Orton: Except when one meets the Queen one *generally* hasn't threatened to shove one's typewriter up her arse.
- Chauffeur: Can we break down this door?
- Mrs. Sugden: [calling down the stairs] Clifford! Can we break down the door?
- Mr Sugden: Certainly not! If there's damage to be done, call the police. That's their job.
- Anthea's Mother: [reading Joe's diary] Read all morning, but got another hard-on. Just putting soap on it when mum came in. Said I thought I had a spot coming. Mum quiet all through meal.
- [to Anthea]
- Anthea's Mother: I should think so! Does it go on like this?
- Anthea Lahr: No, the early ones stop just when his life got interesting.
- Anthea's Mother: Hmm. Sounds quite interesting already.
- Joe Orton: [about his parents] I've had a better time than they had, sexually.
- William Orton: We had no time at all.
- Leonie Orton: There must have been times when you were happy.
- William Orton: Oh, yes. Several.
- Kenneth Halliwell: [picking up Joe's Evening Standard Drama Award statue after having killed him with a hammer] I should have used this. More theatrical. But you would have spotted that straight away.
- Brian Epstein: [discussing Joe's Beatles movie screenplay] The Beatles are all pursuing the same girl, right?
- Joe Orton: Yeah.
- Brian Epstein: Well, maybe. Knowing the boys as I do, I would say that was, well, iffy.
- Brian Epstein: [discussing Joe's screenplay for a movie starring The Beatles] On page 53, scene 86, we definitely seem to kiss reality goodbye. "Cut to the boys in bed with Susan, one of them is smoking a joint, he passes it round." Two points there, Joe. One, these boys do not take drugs. They never have taken drugs, they never will take drugs.
- [last lines]
- George Barnett: [as Joe's sister mixes his and Kenneth's ashes] I hope nobody gets to hear about this in Leicester.
- Joe Orton: Some of these people are, well, having sexual intercourse.
- Kenneth Halliwell: Fucking, you mean? Well, what do you expect? Many of them are from Australia.
- Joe Orton: [Ken and Joe are cruising a strange man] He's built like a brick shithouse!
- Kenneth Halliwell: He's probably a policeman.
- Joe Orton: I know, isn't it wonderful?
- Anthea's Mother: [reading Joe's diary] Then went into mum's bedroom and arranged the dressing table mirrors and had a lovely, long, slow... wink.
- Anthea Lahr: Wink? Are you sure that's an 'I'?
- Anthea's Mother: No, dear, I'm not sure at all.