- Shelagh Turner: There were rules in the religious life. But no-one ever told me what the rules were afterwards. I think perhaps I have to write my own.
- Sister Evangelina: [after bomb defusing disaster] Been a while since I've wanted Adolf Hitler's guts for garters. But I'd cheerfully dance on his grave today.
- [first lines]
- Mature Jenny: [narrating] At Christmas we like to see things in their proper place. We unwrap the ancient legends and the oldest truths. We like our angels unchanged and our rituals familiar. We like the right faces around the table, the right carols to be sung, the promise that this is how it is and will always be. Because that is Christmas. The one still point in a world forever turning.
- Sister Julienne: Now then, let us say Lauds, Sister. It will prepare us for the day.
- Sister Monica Joan: I do not care to. Since Sister Bernadette departed, when we sing, there is silence at the heart of every note. Our prayers falter, like a wing with a feather gone. We take flight, but we do not soar.
- Sister Julienne: Music is the vehicle, Sister, not the journey. Our destination does not change.
- Major Fawcett: [struggling with his shirt] Couldn't quite do all the buttons up. Rather too much pipe and slippers, I'm afraid. Comes to us all.
- Captain Goodacre: Yes.
- Major Fawcett: If we're lucky.
- Mature Jenny: [narrating] We ate our turkey at separate tables that year. Our community was scattered, but not to the four winds. We were offered refuge, separately and together in temporary lodgings across Poplar. Christmas turned to New Year, and New Year to early spring. And it was Chummy who found her new home first. Whilst the rest of us hoped, and resumed our work as best we could. And when Nonnatus House was demolished, we heard its dying fall only in the distance.
- [a distant rumbling during prayer time]
- [last lines]
- Mature Jenny: Fate might shake us, but our roots run deep. And we have love to water them. And so we bloom where we are planted. Turning our faces to the sun.