- DS Endeavour Morse: [talking about school sporting activities] I was always the last to be chosen - the one neither side wanted on the team.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [emphatically - last line] I chose you.
- Dorothea Frazil: Yeah, Swift and John-Paul Martinelli. Ray Jubba manages them both.
- DS Endeavour Morse: But they play for different sides.
- Dorothea Frazil: Not for much longer. Word is Martinelli's looking to transfer from Cowley, and Wanderers are interested. "The next Jack Swift"?
- DS Endeavour Morse: But the Wanderers have already got a Jack Swift. Why do they need another?
- Dorothea Frazil: "And slowly answered Arthur from the barge, 'The old order changeth yielding place to new.'" Every god has his day, Morse.
- DS Endeavour Morse: I think, if I were an assassin, I'd want to be pretty sure of my target. Wouldn't you?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [after the case has concluded] Is this what it's come to, Thursday? Gunmen roaming the streets, political violence?
- DCI Fred Thursday: It's war. Undeclared, perhaps, but war all the same.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: A one-off, surely? Swift's crossed these people, upset them in some particular...
- DCI Fred Thursday: I hope you're right, sir. But it feels more like the start of something than the end.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Pray God you're wrong, Thursday. I pray God you're wrong.
- Dorothea Frazil: [after learning of the death threat against Jack Swift] Anything to help the boys in blue, but I've got to tell you, sitting on a scoop this big goes against every instinct. As you can see, we've kept it out of the paper for now, but if the threat is on the level and - God forbid - they make good on it, then it's going to be all over the front page, let alone the back.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: And Morse - how's he these days?
- DCI Fred Thursday: Morse is Morse, sir. You know more than anyone what last year took out of a soul. He walks a step slower, maybe.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Lost some of his bounce, you mean?
- DCI Fred Thursday: A bit less full of himself, a bit less cocksure. That's not always a bad thing. A bit of uncertainty, a bit of doubt, makes a man more careful in his work. More thorough.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Perhaps time does that to all of us, sooner or later. There are some blows from which one never recovers. Not fully, at least.
- Professor Lucius Stamfield: Be wary of judging the past by modern morals, Mr. Sarson, lest your own enlightened virtues one day fall from fashion.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [confronting the killer of Margaret Widdowson] What was it? You thought she'd ask for more? That's usually the way with blackmailers. Or did you just want to make sure her mouth was shut?
- Eamonn Andrews: [interrupting Jack Swift's appearance at the fashion show] Jack - sorry to interrupt such a great show, but we've got another show for you as well! Because tonight, Jack Swift, Oxford Wanderers and Northern Ireland international striker, THIS IS YOUR LIFE!
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [about the girl killed in the bomb blast] She wouldn't have known anything about it. Small mercies.