- DI Robert Lewis: [Quoting the title of a book] "The Gifted Child."
- Dr. Laura Hobson: [Sarcastically] Don't speak about Sergeant Hathaway like that. You'll give him a big head.
- DI Robert Lewis: Were you really talent-spotted?
- DS James Hathaway: What, by MI5? They even got me to sign something... I changed my mind.
- DI Robert Lewis: How'd you get away with it?
- DS James Hathaway: I used invisible ink.
- [as they walk to their cars]
- DS James Hathaway: Drink, sir?
- DI Robert Lewis: Mine's a pint... shaken, not stirred.
- DI Robert Lewis: Why would anyone poison Voss?
- [tutor who had recently moved to Oxford from Harvard]
- DS James Hathaway: There's nothing in his background. He's British, originally.
- DI Robert Lewis: Where from?
- DS James Hathaway: Swindon.
- DI Robert Lewis: Went there once; it was closed.
- Zoe Suskin: It can get lonely. Is that why you're a policeman? Because you're frightened by your own cleverness and of being lonely?
- DS James Hathaway: I was never as clever as you.
- Zoe Suskin: You were, I can tell.
- DS James Hathaway: What makes you think you don't have to be clever to be a policeman?
- Zoe Suskin: Sorry.
- DS James Hathaway: [Looking at a poster for a book-signing event of a best-seller] Would you ever write your memoirs?
- DI Robert Lewis: Only if I could write the shocking truth about you.
- [Lewis and Hobson are examining a woman's body]
- DI Robert Lewis: I presume the bleach is to get rid of the DNA?
- Dr. Laura Hobson: You're learning. You used to think "DNA" meant "Don't Know Anything".
- DI Robert Lewis: Better than thinking "CID" stands for "Coppers In Disguise".
- DS James Hathaway: [Hathaway, the Cambridge graduate, holds an Oxford student's essay] You know sometimes you couldn't believe that this was England's second best university.
- DI Robert Lewis: You're speaking objectively, of course.
- DS James Hathaway: Will he live?
- Doctor: I'm not God.
- DS James Hathaway: No, I'm aware of that, doctor, but any port in a storm. Try.
- DI Robert Lewis: [referring to Hathaway's food poisoning] In any case, we don't know for sure that it was the coffee that gave you the funny turn, rather than the prawns.
- DS James Hathaway: It was DEFinitely the coffee.
- DI Robert Lewis: Gut feeling?
- DI Robert Lewis: [reading aloud as they walk] Gifted children use long words, enjoy problem solving, are very sensitive emotionally, and often prone to deny the obvious.
- [to Hathaway]
- DI Robert Lewis: Remind you of anyone?
- DS James Hathaway: [sharing Lewis's enjoyment] No.
- DI Robert Lewis: I made the last bit up.
- DS James Hathaway: Don't grow up angry, Zoe. It takes so much effort to find your place in the world when you're angry, believe me.
- DS James Hathaway: You've already told us that you were here, alone, working at the time she was killed.
- Leon Suskin: Are you in a position to contradict that?
- DS James Hathaway: Are you in a position to confirm it?
- Eileen Norman: Poison is a woman's weapon.
- DI Robert Lewis: Is it?
- Eileen Norman: "I love the old ways best, the simple way of poison, where we too are as strong as men".
- DS James Hathaway: Uh, one of the Greek tragedies.
- Eileen Norman: Right: Medea. I played her once at drama school. Look at me now.
- DS James Hathaway: Just sometimes, James, do you ever think you could be too clever for your own good? You jumped down my throat when I mentioned Zoe Suskin.
- DI Robert Lewis: Well, it was pure speculation.
- DS James Hathaway: It's a detective's job to speculate. Just because Zoe Suskin is nearly as clever as you is no reason to rule her out of anything.