Pickering: Can you tell me what you were doing in Cuba?
Brennan: Only if you tell me first.
Pickering: I beg your pardon?
Brennan: I don't know your security clearance.
Pickering: Well, what is your security clearance?
Brennan: You should check with the State Department.
Pickering: I'm from the State Department.
Brennan: Then that should make it easy for you.
Pickering: When you were in Cuba, did you meet with a man called [consults notebook] Juan Guzman?
Brennan: [holds up finger, dials a number from memory] This is Dr. Brennan at the Jeffersonian; you told me to call you if anyone ever asked about...him. [In response to question] Someone from the State Department, an Agent Pickering. [she hands the phone to Pickering]
Pickering: [picks up phone, annoyed] Pickering. Yes Sir, yes, I'll wait here. [hands the phone back to Brennan to hang up, looks shocked]
Brennan: Any other questions?
Pickering: No. No, the review has been suspended. I've been ordered to wait here until someone comes to destroy my notes.

Pickering: Didn't I see you on television this morning, Dr. Brennan?
Brennan: How could I possibly know what you watched on television?
Pickering: Yes, that was her.
Goodman: Perhaps you should work your way up to Dr. Brennan.

Pickering: What I need to do here is to establish that you are not a threat to the security of this country.
Zack: I'm getting a degree in Forensic Anthropology; I'm halfway through another in Engineering. What are you afraid I will do? Build a race of criminal robots that will destroy the earth?
Pickering: Do you have that kind of fantasy often?
Zack: Very often.
Pickering: Does it concern you that such adolescent thoughts are a sign of emotional retardation?
Zack: I've been told. I'm working on it.
Pickering: Can you understand why that concerns us?
Zack: Not really.

Pickering: When was the last time you saw your husband?
Angela: My husband?
Pickering: Yes.
Angela: [surprised] Oh. [laughs] Oh. [chuckles] Wow, you mean that actually took? Really, it didn't seem legal. We were in Fiji. You know, there was a fire dance. You know how those things can be, right?
Pickering: I really don't, Miss Montenegro.

Police Trainer: [after a flaming body lands on a police car] We're gonna need a... um... a fire extinguisher. Then maybe some sort of... trauma counselor?

Pritchard: Oh, I am not the jealous sort, and you are painfully naïve if you think my sex life was limited to Ian, as I'm sure yours was not.
Brennan: But I didn't sleep with Ian.
Pritchard: You didn't?
Brennan: No.
Pritchard: Why not? You obviously fancied each other.
Brennan: Yes, I noted several physiological responses to his presence which can only be explained by sexual attraction
Pritchard: So why didn't you sleep with him then?
Brennan: Because of Booth.
Pritchard: Ohhh, you know, I suspected that you two might be more than just partners.
Brennan: Oh, no. That's incorrect. Booth advised me not to sleep with Ian because Booth didn't want me to be another notch on Ian's bedpost.
Pritchard: See, I rather saw it as climbing Everest. Of course it's been done before but the experience is still breathtaking.
Brennan: You have a strong sexual appetite and you're not hamstrung by social moralizing. I can empathize with that.
Pritchard: Thank you.

Private Investigator: So your husband signed his name to the marriage license with an X?
Angela: Yeah.
Private Investigator: So you married a guy without knowing his name.
Angela: It was Fiji, okay? I was on vacation.

Protesters at chicken farm: Pluck you! Pluck you! Pluck you!

Russ Brennan: I call... every year... on your birthday. You never pick up.
Brennan: Take a hint.

Russ: Tempy, that theory explains why Mom never came back for you during those one and a half years before she died!
Brennan: What's your excuse, Russ?
Russ: You're the one that left me! You needed someone to blame and you chose me.
Brennan: I was fifteen years old!
Russ: I was nineteen. My parents were gone. My sister hated my guts. Everyone told me that she'd be better off in foster care.
Brennan: You didn't even ask me!
Russ: I tried, Temperance. You wouldn't talk to me. You still wouldn't talk to me if Mom's bones didn't show up. And I kept trying. Every year. Every year on your birthday. You're the one that gave up. You turned your back on me and you made yourself a new family.

Ruth Keenan: Hi Temperance, it's Mom. I don't know when or if you'll ever see this, but I hope to put it in your hands myself and see you again with my own eyes. This is a hard, hard world. Your father and I left you and Russ to save your lives. People would have killed you to get us. That's not what this is about. Today is your sixteenth birthday. I'm so sorry not to be there to tell you all the things a mother should tell her daughter when she turns sixteen, and sorry not to give you this. [holds up the ring Brennan's father gave her] It's an heirloom. And starting today, it's yours. I don't know how long it will take me to get it to you, but I promise you I will. You're going to hear a lot of things about your parents, especially your father. He is a good man. It was my insistence to leave you kids. Max would have kept us together, fought until the end. I'm not sure he'll ever forgive me for that. So please, Temperance, I need you to forgive me. And if you can't forgive me, I beg you, honey, if you can't forgive me, please forgive your father. Remember you were loved in this world, cherished. What I did to you may have been wrong, but I did it out of love. I did it out of love.
Season 3

Sam Cullen: Well, at least nobody got shot this time. (to Brennan) Probably because she didn't have a gun.

Sam Riley: [to Caroline] Damn lawyers! Working in the case for 30 years, and you don't think it deserves a damn phone call? [Caroline walking away] HEY!I'm talking to you!
Caroline: No!You're yelling at me, and my ears are starting to ring. Now, I'm sorry that after 40 years as an agent for the FBI, you're still a LITTLE girl. But I'd like to find out who killed June Harris. So how about ye' stop whining...and help, okay cherie?

Sam: [to Booth] She must be really good in bed. Otherwise I don't see why you'd keep her around.
Brennan: Yes, I am. Very good. But Booth would have no direct knowledge of that fact.

Saroyan: I am saying no to this experiment.
Hodgins: Yeah, I got that after the part where you said no seven times in a row.
Cam: I find that you don't pay attention to the first six.