Spencer Reid quotes from Criminal Minds

JJ

So killer satanic cults don't exist, but satanic serial killers do?

Rossi

Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate.

JJ

Huh, thanks for clearing that up.

Reid

Eh, it's from Dante's Inferno: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

JJ

So that was a "yes"?

Hotchner

A big "yes".

Morgan

I asked her to go out last night. But she was pissed at me. She blew me off.

Reid

So you ended up in church?

Morgan

Yeah. What does it mean? On one hand, if she'd gone out with me, she would have never got shot. On the other hand... what are the odds that the first time I pray in twenty years, she's on the table?

Reid

[arriving at the crime scene] Should have listened to me.

Morgan

It wouldn't have saved that much time, Reid. Let it go.

Reid

The interchange between the 405 and the 101 freeways is consistently rated the worst interchange in the entire world.

Morgan

Why do you know that?

Reid

It's a government report.

Morgan

So what?

Reid

So, you work for the government. What, you don't read the reports?

Morgan

On traffic patterns in a city 2,500 miles from where I live?

Reid

2,295 miles.

Morgan

Don't make me smack you in front of all these people.

Morgan

[On the phone with Garcia.] Just leave it alone until I get there. Hey. Hey. Hard-head. Don't make me spank you when I get back.

Reid

[Yelling so Garcia can hear him] Don't listen to him Garcia! He's all talk. [Morgan hits him on the head] Ow! J.J! He just hit me!

J.J.

Boys behave, or I will ground you both.

Reid

[Jack has his daughter's kidnapper at gunpoint] Jack, you swore to your wife you'd protect Lindsey. Listen to her, Jack. Listen to what she wants. She's... she's begging you to kill somebody right in front of her. What do you think your wife wanted you to protect her from? Jack... your life has been, uh... it's been about violence, and if... you do this, Lindsey's will be, too. Do you want that?

[pleading] No, you don't want that.

Reid

When does it end, Jack?

Put down the gun.

[whispering] Kill him.

Reid

When does it stop?

Tomorrow.

Morgan

Are you okay, Reid?

Reid

I tried. [pause] I tried, but I couldn't.

Morgan

Hotch would never have taken this case. And I say "case" in the loosest sense.

Rossi

Profile the facts as they are without bias. Isn't that what we do?

Morgan

What facts, Rossi? Look at us. We don't have a single file.

Rossi

Okay, let me help you out. Jump right in anytime. Fact one - there are no files, so it seems no case.

Prentiss

But what if there is?

Reid

One fire, fourteen deaths, five suicides.

JJ

All the suicides are connected to the original fire.

Prentiss

And all exactly two weeks apart.

Rossi

Come on, Derek, you can't tell me that doesn't feel a lot like a pattern.

Prentiss

And a timeline.

Rossi

Right?

Morgan

A lot of people lost their kids in that fire. That's a whole world of grief, and for a few... suicide's their only way out.

Rossi

Or someone decided it was.

Morgan

And made it look this way?

Rossi

What if they have?

Morgan

Then we're looking for one very smart unsub.

[referring to high-school bullying] Oh, boys have a way of working these things out for themselves.

Reid

I'll say: Owen's out there right now working things out with an assault rifle.

Reid

His life was one torment after another. His teachers gave up on him, his classmates bullied him and his father blamed him while giving him access to guns. Given these condition,s you're actually quite fortunate.

It sounds like you're saying these victims deserved this.

Hotchner

We're not. Nobody deserves this.

Reid

But you could have prevented it.

Hotchner

Reid, can I talk to you?

Reid

It's the truth! They could have done something, they work with his father, they knew Owen!

Hotchner

So what? All adolescents profile like sociopaths. There's a reason you can't diagnose them until they're 18.

Reid

Yeah, they could have seen the signs!

Hotchner

Nobody sees the signs, Reid! You know that! And making it their fault is not only unfair, it's dangerous. I want you to go back to the Savage house and I want you go through Owen's room.

Reid

Morgan's already doing that.

Hotchner

Yeah, and you're going to join him.

Reid

Oh, you're punishing me?

Hotchner

No, I'm using you. You know this kid better than anybody. Go find us something we can use!

Morgan

You said I was a high school jock. I was, but not at first. My freshman year, I was five foot three. I weighed a buck twenty soaking wet, so trust me when I tell you I got my ass kicked every day. So the following summer, I hit the weights. And I got lucky, I grew six inches. But it was never about vanity, Reid. It was about survival.

Reid

I was in the library and, um... Harper Hillman comes up to me, and she tells me that, uh... Alexa Lisbon wants to meet me behind the field house. Alexa Lisbon's like, easily, the prettiest girl in school.

Morgan

So what happened? Alexa wasn't there?

Reid

No, she was there. So was the entire football team. They... stripped me naked and tied me to a goalpost. So many kids were there, you know, just watching.

Morgan

Nobody tried to stop it?

Reid

I begged... I begged them to, but they just... just watched. And... finally, they got bored and they left. It was like midnight when I finally got home. And my mom had... mom was having one of her episodes, so she didn't even realize I was late.

Morgan

You never told her what happened?

Reid

I never told anybody. I thought... it was one of those things that I thought if I didn't talk about it, I'd just forget. But I remember it like it was yesterday.

Morgan

[sighs] Oh, Reid, you don't need an eidetic memory for that. You know, we forget half of what they teach us in school, but when it comes to the torment and the people who inflicted it, we've all got an elephant's memory.

Hotchner

You knowingly jeopardized your life and the lives of others. I should fire you. You're the smartest kid in the room, but you're not the only one in that room. You pull something like this again, you will be. Am I clear?

Reid

Yes, sir. It won't happen again. Thank you.

Hotchner

What were you thinking?

Reid

I was thinking that would have been, uh, the second time a kid died in front of me.

Hotchner

You're keeping score, just like Owen.

Reid

It was my turn to save one.

Hotchner

It doesn't work like that.

Reid

It should.

Hotchner

I know it's painful when the person you identify with is the bad guy.

Reid

What's that make me?

Hotchner

Good at the job. I know it's none of my business, but when we land, I think you should go and catch the rest of that movie.

Prentiss

He could be suffering from Cluster B.

Cluster B?

Reid

Ah, cluster of personality disorders. It's also called a erratic, dramatic emotional cluster. An enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that differentiates itself markedly from the expectations the individual's cultures. It manifests...

Morgan

[Interrupts Reid] This guy is a sick dude!

Aren't you guys a little overqualified for this case? I mean, this guy's no serial killer.

Reid

We construct behavioral profiles for a variety of investigative scenarios. That includes stalking.

Morgan

We've seen this kind of thing before, and it can get ugly real fast.

Reid

[looking at a piece of paper] It's remarkable. Something like this makes you question everything you thought you knew.

Garcia

Yeah. It's like the Monolith in 2001.

Reid

So there was actually a time when something like this was socially acceptable?

Garcia

Oh... you're young. [takes the paper from Reid] The eighties left a lot of people confused.

Garcia

This is, uh, especially sad, though.

Prentiss

All right, very funny, you guys. Very funny. [snatches the paper from Garcia] What'd you do to it?

Garcia

Do?

Prentiss

You obviously altered it in Photoshop or something. [shows the photo to Garcia] That hair?

Garcia

Oh, no, Pussycat. That - that's all you. Garfield High, Class of '89.

Prentiss

[looking at the photo again] You really didn't change anything?

Garcia

I hacked it, as is. You're seriously trying to tell me you don't remember rocking that look?

Reid

Perhaps your lack of recognition stems from a dissociative fugue suffered in adolescence. Say, at a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert?

Agent Reid?

Reid

Sorry, I know it's late, but, um, I wanted to give you the news before it hit the paper. Matloff's changing his plea to guilty. Everyone agreed to life without parole.

You didn't have to come here.

Reid

I also came to return this. [hands Mr. Corbett his daughter's watch] I had them release it from evidence.

It belonged to Darci's grandmother. They're very close.

Reid

I couldn't help but notice the inscription on the back. "Glory in the flower"? I'm not familiar.

Poetry was something they shared. It's Wordsworth. "What though the radiance that was once so bright, be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can... bring back..." [sighs wearily] Thanks. [closes the door]

Reid

[continues to recite the poem in voiceover as he walks back to the car] "Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower, we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."