- [Two porters wheel a washing machine onto the shop floor]
- Roy Huggins: Mr Highbank. Where d'you want this Colston?
- Charles Highbank: Window number four, please, Mr Huggins. Walk this way.
- [Highbank walks off, strutting effeminately, hand on hip]
- Roy Huggins: [to his mate] If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need the talcum powder.
- DI Fred Thursday: You never thought to go back after your husband died?
- Luisa Armstrong: There's nothing for me there.
- DI Fred Thursday: Family?
- Luisa Armstrong: No.
- DI Fred Thursday: You shouldn't be alone, too much life in you for that.
- Luisa Armstrong: I should find someone to take care of me, you mean? Who? A policeman?
- DI Fred Thursday: We were friends once.
- Luisa Armstrong: That's the last thing we were. Friendship takes time. What did we have? Two months? Three? If that. There wasn't room for friendship, too.
- DI Fred Thursday: Don't tell me. I was there. I remember everything. Everything. Every moment like nothing before or since. It's here. Still. Forever. The scene of the pines. The sun on the water. So vivid. And you. All above everything, I remember you.
- Luisa Armstrong: Don't.
- DI Fred Thursday: Your eyes.
- Luisa Armstrong: You can't say these things. You can't, not to me.
- DI Fred Thursday: I've no-one else to say them to.
- DI Fred Thursday: A policeman's lot is not a happy one, I'm told, but the lot of a policeman's wife hardly gets a mention. But while I've been out, running around, nabbing villains and uh generally playing silly buggers, the real brains of the outfit has made a house a home, rasised two children - our children - seen 'em off to school each morning, clean and smart, and somehow, even with all that to do, there's always been a hot meal for me when I get home. Twenty-five years ago I got the best bit of luck any man ever had. The toast is: my Win.
- DI Fred Thursday: [unwrapping his sandwiches] Let's see what we shall see.
- DC Endeavour Morse: You'll see ham and tomato.
- [Thursday finds that combination]
- DC Endeavour Morse: Thursday.
- [last lines]
- Luisa Armstrong: [voiceover of her note to Thursday as Morse reads, then burns it] You should know it was not Ugo betrayed us all those years ago. They said they would spare Francesca. I should have died at the villa Casa Rianca. I have lived with my sin, hidden it from the world. And then I saw you again. I just want to be at peace. Every life holds one great love, one name to hold on to at the end, one face to take into the dark. It was always too late. A number of the garde knew and forgive her. We were young. There was the war. Amore mio.
- Mr. Brian Quinbury: What an old wreck. I turned 20 that month. Can you believe it? Throwing a machine around the sky at 360-odd miles an hour. My son's a year older now than I was then. He doesn't even drive yet.
- DC Endeavour Morse: It must have been terrifying.
- Mr. Brian Quinbury: Later, perhaps. When the piano stops and the beer runs dry but... Not in the moment. It happens so fast. Then it's over and you find yourself alone out on the edge of it. The light up there, my God, and this patchwork below. You fall in love.
- DC Endeavour Morse: With what?
- Mr. Brian Quinbury: England. "Her ways to roam."
- DC Endeavour Morse: Didn't you go to Sunday School?
- DS Peter Jakes: [grimly] You don't want to know where I went.
- Win Thursday: [after being detained by the store detective] Detective? He couldn't detect muck on a rug!
- DC Endeavour Morse: [asking Luisa about her acquaintance with Thursday] You were friends - in Italy?
- Luisa Armstrong: More.
- [after a meaningful pause]
- Luisa Armstrong: Comrades.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [reading the diary of the murdered woman, with its confessions of adultery] What do they want?
- DI Fred Thursday: Passion would seem to be the long and the short of it, sir.
- Alan Burridge: Perhaps you could telephone Mr Quinbury just to make sure she's not ill or anything.
- Mr. Brian Quinbury: Traditionally, sir, it's always been for the staff to notify the store of such an eventuality. Certainly that's always how things were done under Mr Burridge Senior.
- Alan Burridge: Mr Quinbury, you've served my late father and this store better than any man alive for 20 years. He often spoke to me of how he valued your advice as, indeed, do I.
- Mr. Brian Quinbury: Good of you to say so, sir.
- Alan Burridge: Truth is... I've only been in the job for three months. And I don't doubt I'll make a great many mistakes, but one thing I do know, Burridges is its staff. Their happiness and well-being are my whole concern. With that in mind, might we not... together, create a few new traditions of our own?
- Mr. Brian Quinbury: I'll telephone at once, sir.
- DI Fred Thursday: The coroner was wrong. "Died of wounds." That's what we used to put. Those that didn't die at once. A week. A month. Years, some of 'em. Bullet. Bit of shrapnel. Works its way to the heart. She died of wounds.
- Rufus Haldane: [after Morse has asked about the "eternity" symbol] It's a lemniscate. Introduced into mathematics in the mid-17th century by John Wallis. It stands, almost invariably, for infinity.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Does it have any other significance?
- Rufus Haldane: It symbolized eternity and the soul of the world; and, of course, in modern mysticism, it represents Ouroboros.
- DC Endeavour Morse: The snake that devours its own tail.
- Rufus Haldane: Yes. Just so.
- [first lines]
- Rufus Haldane: The Greeks called it 'apeiros'. Anaximander of Miletus termed it 'apeiron'. But we generally take it to mean the same thing, which is to say... endless.
- DS Peter Jakes: Stockings aren't as popular with women as they used to be, sir. It's more pantyhose, nowadays.
- Joey Lisk: You see, the way I look at it, when it comes to birds, there's two types of men in this world. Them that's got it and them that don't. Know what I mean?
- Luisa Armstrong: What do you want, Fredo? I'm not her. She died. Remember the girl you knew.
- DI Fred Thursday: I have. Always.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [when Morse has queried the findings of DI Chard] A junior officer calling the work of a senior Detective Inspector into question? Mr. Merchant's been charged. Are you sure about this?
- DI Fred Thursday: Wedding and engagement rings are missing in all cases. Could go long, sir. I'd be glad of Morse if you can spare him from this report.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Oh. Yes - yes, I suppose. Probably best to keep him out of DI Chard's way.Not everyone has my forgiving nature.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [assessing the corpse of Mrs. Haldane] Strangled from behind. With a silk stocking - not hers. Underwear balled up in her handbag. Physical relations had taken place within an hour or two of death. Nothing to say unwillingly, at first glance.
- DI Fred Thursday: [recalling the war, and his reason for thinking Luisa dead] When nobody arrived at the rendezvous, I made my way back to the villa with Lupo. We saw from the olive grove, through binoculars. They had you lined up against the white wall. Francesca I recognized first - that red dress. Then I saw you beside her. I saw you fall. I thought you were dead. I tried to get down, but Lupo cold-cocked me. Just as well - more than likely, I'd have got them killed as well. When I came to, it was dark. A cave somewhere. He said they'd got everyone.
- Luisa Armstrong: [meaningfully] They did.
- Joey Lisk: [verbally abusing Highbank for his homosexuality] My old man fought in the war for the likes of you!
- Charles Highbank: [sarcastically defiant] And he never got one? Shame!
- DC Endeavour Morse: [assessing the murder victims] Three married women - not one of whom has been found wearing a wedding ring.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Ah! Excitement. What happened to reliability, hmm?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Of course, North Oxford's full of that type. Life a drama... And themselves its star. The damage done.
- DC Endeavour Morse: [investigating the death of Norman Parkis] It's connected to the strangler.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: To the strangler? By what means?
- DC Endeavour Morse: The stockings he's used on the last two victims. Burridge's is...
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: ...the only place that supplies them. But, outside of that, the victim is, in this instance, male and he's been stabbed rather than strangled - which leads me to believe that the enquiry should be assigned to another investigating officer.