- Mary Liz Wetherly: [Remember] the morning I walked in on you and Dad?
- Carol Wetherly: Yes.
- Mary Liz Wetherly: What's it like?
- Carol Wetherly: What's what like?
- Mary Liz Wetherly: Making love. Don't play mother with me.
- Carol Wetherly: That's what I am.
- Brad Wetherly: [after finding Hiroshi abandoned at home] I'd better take you home with me, Hiroshi... because I don't think your dad is coming back.
- Carol Wetherly: I don't know what day it is, I've lost track. Henry thinks some miracle may save us yet, he's foolish. The cemetery's full, they're burning the bodies.
- [sewing up a makeshift body bag]
- Carol Wetherly: My firstborn, my daughter.
- Carol Wetherly: [Carol recalls in her diary how she and the kids found Scottie's maple sapling dead from radiation exposure] ... Scottie's tree... I can't write today.
- Father Hollis Mann: I'm sorry I'm late. Let's begin.
- Carol Wetherly: Not yet!
- Father Hollis Mann: God said...
- Carol Wetherly: [hysterical] Forget God! No one is touching him! No one is burying him until I find his bear! Do you hear me? You understand?
- [Carol runs back to the house, pause]
- Father Hollis Mann: ...whosoever believeth in me shall never die.
- Brad Wetherly: Doesn't radiation get into water?
- Carol Wetherly: Well, it can. Maybe it won't be so bad here. But we'd better be careful.
- Scottie Wetherly: What's "radation"?
- [pause]
- Mary Liz Wetherly: Here, have a banana.
- Scottie Wetherly: You never gave me one before.
- Mary Liz Wetherly: I did now.
- Carol Wetherly: There may not be any... more for a while.
- Newscaster: This is San Francisco. We have lost our New York signal. Radar sources confirm the explosion of nuclear devices there, in New York, and up and down the East Coast. Ladies and gentlemen, this is real. This is...
- Emergency Broadcast System Announcer #1: [interrupting with a high-pitched tone] We interrupt this program at the request of the White House. This is a national emergency. This is an Emergency Action Notification. I repeat, we interrupt this program at the request of the White House. Do not use your telephone. Telephone lines should be kept open for official use. Important instructions will follow.
- Carol Wetherly: [telephone rings] Hello? Tom? Hello?
- Emergency Broadcast System Announcer #2: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
- [the TV suddenly goes dark, a blinding flash appears outside the living room window, and air raid sirens begin to wail]
- Brad Wetherly: Mom?
- Mary Liz Wetherly: Mom?
- Carol Wetherly: Get away from that window!
- Scottie Wetherly: Mommy!
- Carol Wetherly: Get down on the floor. Get down!
- Mary Liz Wetherly: Was that Dad?
- Brad Wetherly: Is he in San Francisco?
- Scottie Wetherly: I'm scared!
- Carol Wetherly: I don't know. Put your heads down! Cover your eyes! Oh my God. My God.
- Brad Wetherly: What do we do now?
- Carol Wetherly: Make a wish.
- Brad Wetherly: What do we wish for, Mom?
- Carol Wetherly: [final lines of the film] That we remember it all. The good and the awful. The way we finally lived. That we never gave up. That we will last, to be here... ... to deserve the children.
- [it is implied that Carol, Hiroshi and Brad are the only people left in the United States, possibly the world, who haven't died yet from radiation poisoning]