- Johnny Worricker: I had a feeling that if I asked a favour you were a sort of person who'd come through.
- Nancy Pierpan: You trust me. Why on earth would you trust me?
- Johnny Worricker: Because that's the job. Deciding who to trust. That's what the job is.
- Johnny Worricker: Also, you told your father that I work for the Home Office.
- Nancy Pierpan: I lied.
- Johnny Worricker: Yeah.
- Nancy Pierpan: You trust me because I lied.
- Johnny Worricker: The purpose of intelligence is to find the truth, not to confirm what we already believe. We're meant to look for what's there, not for what we want to be there.
- Rollo Maverley: Come on, Johnny! Once they wanted communists, we gave them communists. Now they want Arabs, we give them Arabs. They decide what they're looking for, we find it for them.
- Johnny Worricker: This is a small painting you might like. It's by the same artist but not as good.
- Nancy Pierpan: I couldn't possibly take it.
- Johnny Worricker: You can take it. You're going to live a long time and be an old woman and this way you'll always have something decent on your wall.