- Ludo Talenti: [to Morse] Every man has his price. Every man. I shall make it my life's business to find yours, and once I have found your weakness I shall exploit it without mercy to my own end.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [showing Win what he's impulsively bought] Bought a couple of canaries down the market. A pair: a cock and a hen; we might get some chicks.
- Win Thursday: [very annoyed] Might we?
- DCI Fred Thursday: I used to keep birds when I was a boy. Well, look after them for the old man. I thought it might be... something, uh, uh, an interest.
- Win Thursday: Feathers everywhere.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [realizing he's made a mistake] It's not feathers everywhere and if it is I'll, I'll... see to it. It's two birds; they're not going to bother you.
- Win Thursday: [unbending] Well, where are we going to put them?
- DCI Fred Thursday: [losing his temper] Where are we going to keep them? Up my arse, Winifred! That's where we're going to keep them! Up my arse! Like David Nixon.
- Win Thursday: [very cool] I'm just asking. No need for language.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [disgusted by Blish's chauvinistic attitudes to women] There's a don like that in every other common room in Oxford. His experience of the other half of humankind starts with Matron and doesn't get much further. Women are only good for ironing their shirts and making sure the cruet's filled at high table.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [confronting the killer of Dr. Benford] You'll never breathe free air again. Why not come clean? Get it off your chest.
- [first lines]
- DS Endeavour Morse: The good ended happily and the bad unhappily; that's what fiction means. When the overture begins, you don't know what the opera might be or where the story might take you. Whether it'll be comedy or tragedy. This is a story about love.
- Dorothea Frazil: What about you? You've clearly plans.
- [taking in his tuxedo]
- DS Endeavour Morse: [in a joking tone] Oh, I shall be oppressing someone, somewhere I expect. Keeping the chauvinist end up.
- Dorothea Frazil: Mmm...
- [understanding he's joking]
- DS Endeavour Morse: Otherwise, I take my comforts where I can, "Music hath charms."
- DCI Fred Thursday: [voicing his suspicions of Carl Sturgis] It's him. I know it is. I can feel it in my corns.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [asked about religious faith] Can't say I've had much use for it in civilian life - outside of court, of course. We weren't Bible-raised.
- Professor Blish: [at the dinner-table] Dessert?
- Mrs. Blish: Prunes.
- Professor Blish: Splendid.
- Mrs. Blish: And cold custard.
- Professor Blish: Tip-top.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [about the ESP experiments] Anything in it, do you think? I mean this sixth-sense business. I've always had it down as a load of old baloney. I mean, if you had the gift of second sight, or whatever it is, you'd be down the bookies', wouldn't you? Not trying to see what Mr. Brezhnev's got in his briefcase.
- Dorothea Frazil: I'm still waiting to hear about Venice.
- DS Endeavour Morse: The streets are filled with water.
- [He smiles]
- Dorothea Frazil: [Grinning back] Stop press!
- Professor Blish: [dismissively, about Naomi Benford] Women are too emotional for the life scientific.
- Dr. Naomi Benford: [meeting Morse after telephoning him] I might have spoken out of turn last night. Prematurely, at least.
- DS Endeavour Morse: How's that?
- Dr. Naomi Benford: I'm afraid my blood was up when I telephoned you.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [sternly] You are aware there's an offence of wasting police time?
- Dr. Naomi Benford: [not budging] No. I'm sorry, but there are professional protocols I'm obliged to observe before I speak freely.
- DS Endeavour Morse: If you have any information regarding what happened on the towpath at New Year, you have a duty to tell the police.
- Dr. Naomi Benford: And, I'm sorry, it's not my story to tell. There are people I have to talk to - well, a person - I'm speaking to them this afternoon.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Right.
- Dr. Naomi Benford: I'm sorry. I can't betray a confidence.
- Dr. Jeremy Kreitsek: [defending his work in ESP research to a sceptical Morse] I'm sure that, to a layman, it all sounds like a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo, but Faraday was an early researcher. Sir William Crookes, Rufus Osgood Mason. They all believed the mind has vast, untapped powers.
- Dorothea Frazil: [meeting Thursday at the murder scene] So, how was your New Year's Eve? Resolutions?
- DCI Fred Thursday: [grimly] Find out who did this. You?
- Dorothea Frazil: Oh, I'm long past mending my ways.