"[as the team prepares to leave, Miller comes stomping in] Everybody stay exactly where you are! The party's over. Somebody stepped on the cake! [opens his case] Exhibit A: a clockwork fuse. Elementary and archaic, but they work. Only this one doesn't work, you know why? The clock's okay, but the contact arm's been broken off. This clock could tick away until Christmas, and it wouldn't set off a firecracker! Exhibit B: Exhibit B is missing! All my slow-burning fuses are gone, disappeared, vanished! Exhibit C: my time pencils. Seventy-five grains of fulminate of mercury in every one of them, enough to blow off my hand. And very unstable, very delicate. [He smacks the one in his hand against the bundle of the rest, then violently crumples the whole mess together, and throws them in a corner] Which means there is a traitor in this room."

"Squadron Leader Howard Barnsby, RAAF: First, you've got that bloody old fortress on top of that bloody cliff. Then you've got the bloody cliff overhang. You can't even see the bloody cave, let alone the bloody guns. And anyway, we haven't got a bloody bomb big enough to smash that bloody rock. And that's the bloody truth, sir."

"Maria Pappadimos: She is my friend, Anna. She is one of us. It's bad that this happened to her. Before the Germans came, she was a school teacher in Mandrakos. Last year, she was caught. They tortured her to make her betray us. They whipped her until the white of her bones showed. Some nights we could hear her screaming. Then they took her to the fortress and they kept her there for six months. When they let her go, she could not speak. She has never spoken since, not even in her dreams. Even I have never been allowed to see the scars on her back. But she's a good fighter - as good as any of you. She is like a ghost. She goes anywhere. She got us these guns and she kills without mercy. You are very lucky brother."

"Anthony Quinn - Col. Andrea Stavros, Hellenic Army"

"James Darren - Pvt. Spyros Pappadimos, US Army"

"Shelley Winters - Ruby"

"Jane Asher - Annie"

"Eleanor Bron - the Doctor"

"Graham Stark - Humphrey"

"You think you've been getting away with it all this time, standing by. Well, son... your bystanding days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck! They told me that you're a genius with explosives. Start proving it! [gesturing with his pistol] You got me in the mood to use this thing, and by God, if you don't think of something, I'll use it on you! I mean it."

"Sir, I've inspected this boat, and I think you ought to know that I can't swim."

"You know what? When I look back on my little life and the birds I've known, and think of all the things they've done for me and the little I've done for them, you'd think I've had the best of it along the line. But what have I got out of it? I've got a bob or two, some decent clothes, a car, I've got me health back and I ain't attached. But I ain't got me peace of mind - and if you ain't got that, you ain't got nothing. I dunno. It seems to me if they ain't got you one way they've got you another. So what's the answer? That's what I keep asking myself - what's it all about? Know what I mean?"

"She's got a little ginger moustache. But I find I'm quite willing to overlook the odd blemish in a woman, providing she's got something to make up for it. Well, that's what we're all here for, innit - to help each other out in this life."

"If a bird ain't got you one way, she's got you another."

"Do you know, I'm beginning to think she was beautiful. After all, it ain't through the eyes that you feel beauty, it's how the heart hungers for something that makes it beautiful."

"Shirley Anne Field - Carla"

"David Niven - Cpl. John Anthony Miller, British Army"

"Stanley Baker - Casey "Butcher" Brown"

"Anthony Quayle - Maj. Roy Franklin, British Army"

"My understanding of women only goes as far as the pleasure. When it comes to the pain I'm like any other bloke - I don't want to know."

"Michael Caine - Alfie Elkins"

"Millicent Martin - Siddie"

"Vivien Merchant - Lily Clamacraft"

"What I loved once and what I love now are two different things."

"Is every man an Alfie? Ask any girl."

"Denholm Elliott - Abortionist"

"Alfie Bass - Harry Clamacraft"

"Sydney Tafler - Frank"

"Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea have given birth to many myths and legends of war and adventure. And these once-proud stones, these ruined and shattered temples bear witness to the civilization that flourished and then died here and to the demigods and heroes who inspired those legends on this sea and these islands. But though the stage is the same, ours is a legend of our own times, and its heroes are not demigods, but ordinary people. In 1943, so the story goes, 2000 British soldiers lay marooned on the tiny island of Kheros, exhausted and helpless. They had exactly one week to live for in Berlin the Axis high command had determined on a show of strength in the Aegean Sea to bully neutral Turkey into coming into the war on their side. The scene of that demonstration was to be Kheros, itself of no military value, but only a few miles off the coast of Turkey. The cream of the German war machine, rested and ready, was to spearhead the attack, and the men on Kheros were doomed unless they could be evacuated before the blitz. But the only passage to and from Kheros was guarded and blocked by two great, newly designed, radar-controlled guns on the nearby island of Navarone. Guns too powerful and accurate for any allied ship then in the Aegean to challenge. Allied intelligence learned of the projected blitz only one week before the appointed date. What took place in the next six days became the legend of Navarone."

"Tell me, schoolteacher, from a purely moral point of view - bearing in mind that we represent the side of goodness and civilization - do you think that what I did to Franklin was a civilized thing to do?"

"To win a war, you have to be just as nasty as the enemy. What worries me is that we're likely to wake up one morning and find out we've become even nastier than they were."

"I've never told her that I love her - except at those times when you've got to say something for appearance's sake."

"If you lose a bird you can always replace her. But with a child it's different."

"[about Gilda's appearance while she is pregnant] Mind you, she came over quite beautified for a while, particularly during the early months. And I told her: I said "Blimey, girl, you ain't as ugly as I thought"."

"I don't want no bird's respect - I wouldn't know what to do with it."

"When a married woman gets too hot on, it's time to cool off."

"I told Gilda from the start that I ain't the marrying sort. And do you know what? She don't mind. She's a stand-by and she knows it. And any bird that knows its place in this world can be quite content."

"It don't do to get dependent on nobody in this life."

"You've got to live for yourself in this world, not for others."

"A married woman, see. Every one of 'em in need of a good laugh. It don't never strike their husbands. I always say, make a married woman laugh and you're halfway there with her. Of course, it don't work with the single bird. Start you off on the wrong foot. You get one of them laughing, you won't get nothing else."

"What's it all about... Alfie."

"Gregory Peck - Cpt. Keith Mallory, British Army"

"James Robertson Justice - Jensen/Opening narrator"