- Elizabeth Lowry: [reading from a newspaper] "An ugly painting. The painting by Mr L.S. Lowry - Coming From The Mill - is confusing and appears to have been painted by a child. The figures if we may call them figures are nothing but smudges. Ridiculous marionettes suspended in a squalid industrial scene. If this is Mr Lowry's vision of the Lancashire landscape and its people, I feel very sorry for him. It is a most unsatisfactory picture and an insult to the people of Lancashire."
- Elizabeth Lowry: Most people in Pendlebury are bone idle, that's their trouble.
- L S Lowry: People can't help being poor. No shame in having nothing, is there?
- Elizabeth Lowry: Of course there's shame. We are middle-class, Laurie.
- L S Lowry: We lived above our means, mother. Father knew it. He tried to keep you happy.
- Elizabeth Lowry: Happy? The day we married it rained. Misfortune poured upon me ever since.
- Elizabeth Lowry: No, I'm never cheerful. I haven't felt cheerful since 1868, the year of my confirmation.
- L S Lowry: That was a long time ago, mother.
- Elizabeth Lowry: A lifetime.
- L S Lowry: We're living in 1934.
- Elizabeth Lowry: I'm aware of that.
- [First Lines]
- L S Lowry: I paint what I see. I paint how I feel. I'm a man who paints. Nothing more, nothing less. Every picture I paint always begins the same way. It begins in the same colour. Underneath every picture is the colour white. Flake white.
- Elizabeth Lowry: I had great hopes for you and your father. I thought you'd both be successful men of business. Men of speculation. But he wasn't capable and neither were you. Hopeless.
- L S Lowry: You never liked any of my paintings, mother?
- Elizabeth Lowry: No. I'm not the only one, am I?