- Dr. Max DeBryn: [surveying a month-old corpse recovered from the river] This one's as ripe and runny as a rancid Roquefort.
- Tessa Knight: [walking out on her "Oxford Mail" job for a better-paid one on a London newspaper] Next time you see my name, it'll be on page one.
- Dorothea Frazil: Tread lightly, child. Tread lightly.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Stones in his pockets. Suicide, most likely.
- DC Endeavour Morse: I don't suppose there's a note?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Oh, he'll have had his reasons, I expect. Love's very popular. The want of it. A broken heart.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Where do you stand with all that?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Suicide?
- DC Endeavour Morse: Love.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Bit early in the day for metaphysics, isn't it? "And one was fond of me and all are slain." Love and fishing. Sooner or later, it all comes down to the same thing. The one that got away.
- DC Endeavour Morse: You're friends, then?
- Kent Finn: Well, a gentleman never tells.
- DC Endeavour Morse: A gentleman would just say, "Yes," and leave it at that.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [as the corpse of Tessa Knight is removed] Gently, if you would, gentlemen. She's been through quite enough.
- Dr. Bernard Gould: [to Trewlove] You play a little, officer?
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Oh, I used to, sir. At school, for my house.
- Dr. Bernard Gould: [condescendingly] Yes, well, I'm sure we all played at school.
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: The opening appears to have been the Kronsteen Variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined. Black sacrificed material for positional advantage. The question now is whether he's prepared to accept the exchange of knights in a bid to develop the center.
- Dr. Bernard Gould: [flustered by her knowledge, which clearly exceeds his own] Yes, of course, I didn't mean...
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [quietly pleased] More to my officers than...
- Dr. Bernard Gould: A pretty face?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [firmly] "Appears", I was going to say; "appears".
- Dorothea Frazil: You look as if you haven't been sleeping. Are you all right? You're not in love, are you?
- DC Endeavour Morse: [grimly] Not on my wages.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Losing one's notebook is about as gross a dereliction of duty a serving officer can make.
- DI Fred Thursday: It's an honest mistake, sir.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Honesty doesn't come into it, Thursday. I will thank you not to speak for him.
- DI Fred Thursday: It's why I'm here, sir.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Well, you've had your say.
- DI Fred Thursday: Sir.
- [Door opens]
- DI Fred Thursday: [Door closes]
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: You asked me to find out how many examination papers went astray. I made enquiries. The answer was one. Just yours, Morse. Just yours.
- DC Endeavour Morse: I see.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Do you? I-I wonder. This past three years, you've made some very powerful enemies. They won't forgive and they won't forget. They mean to dog your steps until the very last hour of your service. And now this... If you want my advice, your best hope of salvaging any kind of career would be to transfer to another constabulary.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Leave Oxford?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Why not? Fresh start? You've no family local. As I understand it, there's nothing to keep you here.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [analysing cause of death in one of the corpses] He could have injured himself earlier in the evening. Slow subdural haemorrhage. He comes for a swim, pressure builds up on the cerebral cortex and... goodnight, Vienna. Give you the definitive Prix Fixe once I've had a rootle.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [shown the fishing-fly of the dead scientist] I thought you said he was a seasoned angler? A Minister's Dog is eccentric even by our standards - the name of the fly. There are more vulgar appellations.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Such as?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: The Vicar's Bitch, for one. Legend has it that the fly was fashioned from the hair of a cleric's Labrador.
- DC Endeavour Morse: [to Bright, after the latter has told him his exam papers have gone missing] How many papers went astray? You said "a number". If there were any way to find out, I'd be interested to know.
- DI Fred Thursday: You mind your place!
- DC Endeavour Morse: What is that, exactly - my place?
- DI Fred Thursday: Your place is where I say it is, no more and no less.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Right. Right.
- DI Fred Thursday: Just don't go making something out of nothing, that's all.
- DC Endeavour Morse: That's what we do, isn't it?
- DI Fred Thursday: It's what you do. Didn't have your head in the clouds, you might have gone better with your Sergeant's. Mr. Bright mentioned.
- DC Endeavour Morse: [furiously angry] Did he mention that I could have revised until Ragnarok for all the good it would have done me? If my exam paper doesn't arrive, it's automatic failure.
- DI Fred Thursday: [ignoring this as he sweeps out] Right. Home time.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Sir?
- DI Fred Thursday: That poor girl. I should have listened to you.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Well, you had... things on your mind.
- DI Fred Thursday: Who doesn't? It's no excuse. This lands at my door, nobody else's.
- DC Endeavour Morse: You couldn't have known.
- DI Fred Thursday: You knew. You always know. And you were cheated with your Sergeant's. I know you wanted it. Deserved it too. But I can't say I'm sorry not to lose you to Nights. You're better than that.
- Tessa Knight: [sarcastically, of the JCN computer, after a detailed description of its capabilities] What does it eat?
- Dr. Broderick Castle: [sweetly] Journalists.
- [general laughter]
- Dorothea Frazil: He hides it well, but Morse is the cleverest man in Oxford.
- Kent Finn: [laughing] Oh, I'm cut to the quick!
- Dorothea Frazil: Second cleverest, then - now you're here.
- Win Thursday: You don't have to wrap me in cotton wool, Fred. I won't break.
- DI Fred Thursday: You're all I've got.
- DC Endeavour Morse: [reacting angrily to Tessa Knight's news report] There are things which could only have come from my notebook!
- Dorothea Frazil: Are you accusing Miss Knight of stealing it? Because if you are, I'd like the Mail's lawyers present.
- DI Fred Thursday: If I find this chit of yours does have Morse's notebook, I'll stick 'er on and have her up before the beak so fast, her feet won't touch the ground!
- [first lines]
- Professor George Amory: From Archimedes' sand-reckoner to the Torquetum of Jabir Ibn Aflah, Man has thought to create a thinking machine that equals - and even outstrips - the capabilities of his own mind. Now, with the creation of the Joint Computing Nexus, or JCN for short, that dream comes one step closer to reality.
- Professor George Amory: [about the JCN computer] Not bad for a jumped-up letter-sorter, eh?
- DC Endeavour Morse: How's that?
- Professor George Amory: Well that's what JASON was built for - Mr. Benn's nation-wide six-figure postal-coding system.