- Wendy Carr: Psychopaths are extremely skilled at imitating human emotions. It's how they manipulate other people, or how they gain power over their environment.
- Holden Ford: How do they understand emotions if they don't have them?
- Wendy Carr: Well, they have emotions. They just don't believe other people have them. Or, more specifically, they don't believe that other people have interior lives.
- Holden Ford: [brushing his teeth] Here's a question, if it is Benjamin or some other boyfriend who freaked out on her, does the case merit our involvement? We still can't rule out a sequence killer, but if the perpetrator was a townie, then the crime is random, and there's no expectation that he'll be repeating it.
- Bill Tench: Here's *my* question, shouldn't our funding cover separate rooms?
- Holden Ford: You don't like my company?
- Bill Tench: We'll get connecting doors.
- Holden Ford: The mutilation of her body alone justifies our involvement.
- Bill Tench: Would you mind sitting on your own bed, please?
- [first lines]
- Detective Ocasek: His given name is Benjamin Barnwright, but everybody calls him Benji. He came back to town, just like I told you he would.
- Holden Ford: Benji was home watching TV the night Beverly Jean was killed?
- Detective Ocasek: That's what he told us and I believe him. He let us search his car, no warrant. And we didn't find a thing except for some of Beverly Jean's hair, but in the passenger seat, like you'd expect it.
- Bill Tench: Passenger seat's not the best way to transport a corpse, I'll give you that. But you said he was home alone watching TV? That's not much of an alibi.
- Detective Ocasek: Why? Isn't that what most people do most nights of the week?