Spy Speak/Quotes
Joel: The... spotted cuckoo is flying backwards?
Crow: It's a cold day for pontooning.
Bookseller: I hear the gooseberries are doing well this year... and so are the mangoes.
Bookseller: Aren't you going to say something about "Mine aren't, but the Big Cheese gets his at low tide tonight"?
Lemming: I'm sorry?
Bookseller: Oh! I was just saying, thinking of the weather, I, uh, hear the gooseberries are doing well this year... and so are the mangoes.
Lemming: Mine aren't.
Bookseller: Go on.
Lemming: What?
Bookseller: Go on. Mine aren't, but...
Lemming: What?
"The significant owl hoots in the night."
"Oh, the caged whale. You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down."
"Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men."
"Hooray, hooray for the spinster's sister's daughter."
"To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height."
"Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn."
"The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy."
"What?"
"The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy."
"Are you sure the ill-built tower doesn't tremble mightily at a butterfly's passage?"
"Nope. Bean soup it is. I'm sorry."
"What about the caged whale?"
"What about it?"
"It should know nothing of the mighty deeps, if you must know."
The Warden: The grey nug flies north for the winter.
Assassin: ... Go away.
Adam Jensen: Something, something, Death and taxes. Confucius.
Anonymous X: Riches and hon-- Oh nevermind! You ruined the whole thing!
Anonymous X: What? Wait, that-- That's not it at all! That's not even close!
Adam Jensen: Does it matter?
Anonymous X: Of course it matters! Otherwise, how am I supposed to know you're-- You were supposed to say "death and life have their determined appointments"! Then I say "riches and honor depend upon heaven"!
Adam Jensen: Okay. "Death and life have their determined appointments".
Ivan: The weather is unusually inclement for the time of year.
Ivan: Spy? Spy?! No boyfriend of mine goes out to work.
Adrian: Let us hope that it is so in Leningrad.
Ivan: Ivan.
Adrian: Adrian.
Ivan: You are an old friend of Squiffy's, yes?
Adrian: Yes, he was my tutor at Cambridge.
Ivan: There's no going back, you know.
Adrian: No.
Ivan: Excellent. We leave for Moscow tonight.
Adrian: Wonderful; I think I'll be the best spy you ever had.—Mel Smith (Ivan) and Rowan Atkinson (Adrian), Not the Nine O'Clock News "The Spy Who Came In The Cold"