Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor Quotes

A bookish CIA researcher finds all his co-workers dead, and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust.

Joe Turner: I'd like to go back to New York.
Joubert: You have not much future there. It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.
Joubert: Condor is an amateur. He's lost, unpredictable, perhaps even sentimental. He could fool a professional. Not deliberately, but precisely because he is lost, doesn't know what to do. Unlike Wicks, who has always been entirely predictable.
[Wabash talks about his entry into the US intelligence field]
Mr. Wabash: I go even further back than that. Ten years after The Great War, as we used to call it. Before we knew enough to number them.
Higgins: You miss that kind of action, sir?
Mr. Wabash: No, I miss that kind of clarity.
Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Joe Turner: Ask them?
Higgins: Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!
Higgins: Oh, you... you poor dumb son of a bitch. You've done more damage than you know.
Joe Turner: I hope so.
[after Joubert unexpectedly kills someone]
Joe Turner: Why?
Joubert: I don't interest myself in "why". I think more often in terms of "when", sometimes "where"; always "how much".
Joe Turner: Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
[last lines]
Higgins: Hey, Turner! How do you know they'll print it? You can take a walk. But how far if they don't print it?
Joe Turner: They'll print it.
Higgins: How do you know?
Joubert: Well, the fact is, what I do is not a bad occupation. Someone is always willing to pay.
Joe Turner: I would find it... tiring.
Joubert: Oh, no - it's quite restful. It's almost peaceful. No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause. There's only yourself. The belief is in your own precision.
Kathy: You're not entitled to personal questions! That gun gives you the right to rough me up; it doesn't give you the right to ask me...
Joe Turner: Wh- wh- Rough you up? Have I roughed you up?
Kathy: Yes! What are you doing in my house?
Joe Turner: Have I? Have I?
Kathy: Going through all my stuff? Force...
Joe Turner: Have I raped you?
Kathy: The night is young.
Jimmy: Hey, Shakespeare! How's it going?
Joe Turner: Terrific. I'm building up a great collection of rejection slips.
Jimmy: [as he prepares Turner's lunch order] Yeah, I know the feeling. I always wanted to be Escoffier.
Joe Turner: Well, maybe it's not too late. You know, Van Gogh was thirty before he started to paint.
Jimmy: No kiddin'?
Joe Turner: There's no mayonnaise on Dr. Lappe. On the other hand, Mozart was three when he started to play the piano, and he was composing at six.
Jimmy: Fast starter. 'S probably better.
Joe Turner: Well, I don't know. Van Gogh never sold a painting in a whole lifetime. Mozart died a pauper.
Joubert: [offering Turner a gun] For that day.
Kathy: Oh no, I'll help. You can always depend on the ol' spy fucker.
Joe Turner: I've got a plan. I don't know if it'll work or not, but I'll need your help.
Kathy: Have I ever denied you anything?
Joe Turner: Just look around. They've got it. That's where they ship from. They've got all of it.
Higgins: What? What did you do?
Joe Turner: I told them a story. You play games, I told them a story.
Joubert: Would you move from the window, please?
Janice: I won't scream.
Joubert: I know.
Joe Turner: I need your car.
Kathy: It's called grand theft. You don't want to get in trouble with the police.
Higgins: It didn't have to end this way.
Joe Turner: Of course it did.
Joe Turner: This is no damned book! Somebody or something is rotten in the Company!
Higgins: You never complained 'til yesterday.
Joe Turner: You didn't start killing my friends until yesterday!
Joe Turner: I don't remember yesterday. Today it rained.
Higgins: I'm sorry.
Joe Turner: You're sorry? You're sorry. Oh, I get it. I get it. You expect me to draw fire, like one of those penny arcade bears that parades back and forth waiting for somebody, somebody very good just to take another shot, and you're just gonna hang around and pick him up just before he does it? Or just after?
Higgins: I'll try and find out what's going on; I'm gonna cross-check all those names...
Joe Turner: Nice talking to you, Higgins. Have a nice day.
Kathy: You had bad dreams. Talked in your sleep.
Joe Turner: What did I say?
Kathy: Who's Janice? Well, was she a volunteer or a draftee like me?
Kathy: I don't think you'll live much longer.
Joe Turner: I may surprise you.
Joe Turner: Are you sure about this ideogram?
Janice: Look at this face. Could I be wrong about an ideogram?
[Turner laughs]
Joe Turner: It's a great face. But it's never been to China.
Joe Turner: Listen. I work for the CIA. I am not a spy. I just read books! We read everything that's published in the world. And we... we feed the plots - dirty tricks, codes - into a computer, and the computer checks against actual CIA plans and operations. I look for leaks, I look for new ideas... We read adventures and novels and journals. I... I... Who'd invent a job like that?
Joe Turner: What does Operations care about a bunch of damn books? A book in Dutch. A book out of Venezuela. Mystery stories in Arabic.
Atwood: Wait!
Joe Turner: What the hell is so important about...
[He stops as he sees the connection]
Joe Turner: Oil fields. Oil. That's it, isn't it? This whole damn thing was about oil! Wasn't it? Wasn't it?
Atwood: Yes, it was.
Higgins: It'd have to be somebody in the community.
Joe Turner: Community.
Higgins: Intelligence field.
Joe Turner: Community! Jesus, you guys are kind to yourselves. Community.
Joe Turner: I'm not going into any alley with you or anybody. And fuck the Wall Street Journal!
Kathy: You... you have a lot of very fine qualities. But...
Joe Turner: What fine qualities?
Kathy: You have good eyes. Not kind, but they don't lie, and they don't look away much, and they don't miss anything. I could use eyes like that.
Joe Turner: But you're overdue in Vermont. Is he a tough guy?
Kathy: He's pretty tough.
Joe Turner: What will he do?
Kathy: Understand, probably.
Joe Turner: Boy. That is tough.
Kathy: Sometimes I take a picture that isn't like me. But I took it so it is like me. It has to be. I put those pictures away.
Joe Turner: I'd like to see those pictures.
Kathy: We don't know each other that well.
Joe Turner: Do you know anybody that well?
Kathy: I don't think I want to know you very well. I don't think you're going to live much longer.
Joe Turner: I may surprise you.
Joe Turner: Ice! The murderer pours water into a .38 caliber mold, freezes it, and keeps it solid until the crime. Then he shoots the guy with the ice bullet. Cops show up, there's just a few drops of water. No bullet, no ballistics.- That's great.
Joe Turner: Maybe there's another CIA, inside the CIA.
Dr. Lappe: We have people to service these machines.
Joe Turner: These things are really pretty simple - they just look complicated.
Dr. Lappe: Mr. Turner, I wonder if you're entirely happy here.
Joe Turner: Within obvious limits, yes sir.
Dr. Lappe: Obvious limits?
Joe Turner: It bothers me that I can't tell people what I do.
Dr. Lappe: Why is it taking you so long to accept that?
Joe Turner: Well, I actually trust a few people. That's a problem.
Higgins: You served with Col. Donovan in the OSS, didn't you, sir?
Mr. Wabash: I sailed the Adriatic with a movie star at the helm. It doesn't seem like much of a war now, but it was.
Joe Turner: Raggedy Ann has cotton tits.
Joe Turner: How come you haven't asked me to untie your hands?

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