- Councillor Clive Burkitt: That's what friends are for.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: We are not friends, Councillor. Nor, I am very happy to say, are we ever likely to be.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: A moment's courage or a lifetime of regret - that's always the choice.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [recalling his first meeting with his wife, who is now dying of cancer] The crowd parted for the briefest moment and there she was, pretty as a picture, surrounded by all these dashing types desperate to light her cigarette. Next thing, I'd crossed the lawn, I was right beside her. Have you come to rescue me, she said. Yes, I said, I rather think I have... And now I can't.
- Dr. Jasper Nicholson: Time was when the discretion of a college porter could be relied upon.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Not in my experience.
- DI Fred Thursday: I'm sorry. I've made a mess of things. I love you.
- Win Thursday: Sorry was all I wanted.
- DI Fred Thursday: I know. I've loved you too long to stop now. Should have said it sooner. Better late than never.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [despairing of solving the case] I don't know. I'm just poking about. Who knows?
- Dorothea Frazil: Someone knows.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [angrily, to Thursday] I thought I knew who you were. But, this year, I barely recognise you.
- DI Fred Thursday: [about the wounded DCI Box] If he can pull through, maybe we all get a second chance.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [bitterly] George didn't.
- DI Fred Thursday: [interviewing the mathematician Nicholson about his taste for erotica] Racy go for a numbers man, I'd have thought.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [about the corpse found at Martyr's Field] He was shot twice in the back, hands bound. I'm afraid that's not the worst of it. Doctor?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: There was concrete in the sinuses, mouth, throat,oesophagus and even into the upper reaches of the lungs. He was buried alive - smothered, drowned, in liquid concrete which then set.
- DI Fred Thursday: [angrily returning the bribe-money to Box] I had a mad half-hour, that's all. It's over.
- DCI Ronnie Box: Have a drink. You're not thinking straight.
- DI Fred Thursday: I'm thinking straight for the first time in a long while. Maybe for the first time since George Fancy.
- DCI Ronnie Box: Fancy? That's what's got you by the tail? It's nothing to do with this.
- DI Fred Thursday: It's everything to do with this! He stood for something. I take this, I might as well piss on his grave!
- Councillor Clive Burkitt: On the other hand, if Morse could be persuaded to do the right thing...
- DI Fred Thursday: He's an idealist.
- Councillor Clive Burkitt: Sure, we all are.
- DI Fred Thursday: Maybe once, Councillor. Now you're just a villain. Same as this two-bob shitehawk.
- [gestures towards McGyffin]
- DS Alan Jago: No-one's coming. It's how we come into the world. You. Me. All of us. We're born and we die alone.
- DI Fred Thursday: [angrily, to Jago, after the latter has insulted Morse] I don't care what you didn't mean! You'll treat your colleagues with respect or I'll know why!
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: The truth will come out.
- DS Alan Jago: Oh, the truth'll be what I put in my report. A falling-out of corrupt coppers... and I settled the last man standing.
- [cocks gun]
- George McGyffin: [siren blaring in distance] Al!
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [more sirens] DS Jago may bear some influence over Uniform and C.I.D., but his writ will not run as far as Traffic.
- DS Alan Jago: Sod this. Get out! Get out!
- Win Thursday: I've seen someone. A solicitor.
- DI Fred Thursday: Right.
- Win Thursday: We can't go on this way.
- DI Fred Thursday: No.
- Win Thursday: You in Sam's old room, me in ours.
- DI Fred Thursday: I never asked for that.
- Win Thursday: No. Well, it's done now.
- DI Fred Thursday: Is it?
- Win Thursday: I think so.
- DI Fred Thursday: Right.
- Win Thursday: It doesn't have to be nasty.
- DI Fred Thursday: No.
- DI Fred Thursday: [to Box, after the latter proves not to be the leader of the corrupt faction] Is he working you with his foot or what?
- DI Fred Thursday: [describing Page's burgled home] There was a map of the Gower Peninsula, with one or two things written on it.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Page was a rambler.
- DCI Ronnie Box: What was on the map?
- DS Endeavour Morse: "H.B."
- DI Fred Thursday: And something in Greek.
- DS Endeavour Morse: "Anemoi".
- DI Fred Thursday: The wind gods, apparently.
- DCI Ronnie Box: [sarcastically] Well, I think we can leave them off the suspects roster.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [showing Box the two slips of paper he has found with writing in Hebrew on them] The first word means "truth", the second means "death".
- DCI Ronnie Box: So?
- DS Endeavour Morse: So... according to myth, they're the "words of power" which, when placed in the mouth of a golem, give it life.
- Professor Ernest Burrowes: I live alone. A confirmed bachelor. Another old fossil.
- DI Fred Thursday: You and me both, professor.
- DCI Ronnie Box: There's two types of people, Fred. Those who take, and those who get taken. I know which side I'm on.
- DI Fred Thursday: [emphatically] So do I.
- Dr. Jasper Nicholson: He was my friend and I failed him. I've carried the shame of that failure - my failure - for more than twenty-five years. Now, I am a man profoundly without faith. But I promise you - not a day has gone by when I have not, with utter humility, said the Mourner's Kaddish for Emil Baumgarten and his murdered family.
- Councillor Clive Burkitt: [attempting subtly to bribe Bright] I'm here in a purely advisory capacity, Reginald. A sort of trouble-shooter, if you like.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [coldly resisting] Oh, yes? I see. What sort of trouble do you intend to shoot today, may I ask? Not me, I hope.
- George McGyffin: [to his fellow-Mason, Strange, about to arrest him] You picked the wrong team, brother.
- DS Jim Strange: [angry] We're city men. First and last. We look after our own.
- DS Alan Jago: [arriving at the Cranmer House disaster] What happened?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [quickly taking command of everything] What happened is immaterial for the moment. All that matters now is the preservation of life.
- DCI Ronnie Box: You think anyone could have survived that?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [angry] I don't know. But if they did, it's up to us to get them out!
- DI Fred Thursday: If Page was worried about Binks, why didn't he come to us, report him missing?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Maybe he was afraid.
- DI Fred Thursday: Of what?
- DS Endeavour Morse: If a senior councillor is involved, who knows how far it goes?
- Mr. Jenkins: [interviewed by Morse and Thursday] Dr. Nicholson? About the fun and games, is it?
- DS Endeavour Morse: What fun and games?
- Mr. Jenkins: The stuff left in his cubby, sir. Bits of metal. An amulet, I suppose you'd call it. With Greek writing or something on it. One of the undergrads said someone's been writing the word "Dora" on his blackboard.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Dora?
- Mr. Jenkins: That's right, sir. In the lecture hall and in his tutorial.
- DI Fred Thursday: How long's this been going on?
- Mr. Jenkins: About a month or so, I suppose. I've offered to call the police before now, but he didn't seem too keen.