Hotch Hotchner quotes from Criminal Minds

Hotch

Plato wrote, "We can easily forgive a child who's afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." [NOTE: This quote is falsely attributed to Plato and is actually attributed to Lucretius, who was quoted by Seneca the Elder in his work on "Morals" as, "We are as much afraid in the light as children in the dark."]

How about Andrew, it's Greek for valiant.

Let's call him... Sergio.

Haley

Ha ha. Please tell me you're kidding

Hotch

Butch.

Haley

How about Donald?

Hotch

Hans.

Haley

No! Wait, wait. Um... okay. Gideon.

Hotch

Not a chance.

Haley

It's Hebrew. Look what it means. It's perfect. Gideon Hotchner.

Hotch

No.

Haley

Yes

Hotch

No.

Haley

Yes.

Hotch

No.

Haley

Gideon.

Hotch

This is Special Agent Gideon, Special Agent Morgan, our expert on obsessional crimes, Special agent Reid.

Gideon

Dr. Reid.

Hotch

Dr. Reid, our expert on, well, everything.

[dog barks at Reid] Sandy! No, no, no, no! I'm so sorry.

Hotch

It's okay. It's what we call 'The Reid Effect'. Happens with children too.

Hotch

I'm Agent Hotchner, this is Special Agent Doctor Reid.

You look too young to have gotten into medical school.

Reid

They're PhD's. Three of them.

Are you a genius or something?

Reid

I don't believe that intelligence can be accurately quantified, but I do have an I.Q. of 187, an eidetic memory and can read 20,000 words per minute. [off David's look] Yes, I'm a genius.

Reid

Do you know why he [Gideon] always introduces me as Dr. Reid?

Hotch

Because he knows that people see you as a kid and he wants to make sure that they respect you.

Hotch

Do you know how salesmen get us to buy a car? They call it reciprocity. They drop the price and it feels like they've done us a favor. We feel obligated. There's a sudden pressure to reciprocate this one little favor. And it's so powerful that we'll... put a deposit down on a car that we're not even sure we really want.

So what?

Hotch

So Vogel did you a favor. He protected you in prison, and now you feel like you owe him and you need to protect him. Guys like Vogel learn in the schoolyard which kids to bully and which kids to protect, and he's got you convinced that you owe him so much that you'll go to jail for him. Richard, I'm here to remind you of something. You owe him nothing.

Hotch

You know, Haley and I were looking at a baby names book. Guess what Gideon means in Hebrew.

Reid

[Walking up to Hotch and Morgan] Mighty Warrior. Appropriate.

Gideon

You and Haley picked the baby's name yet?

Hotch

You know, it's funny. Haley liked the name Charles, but, you know... all I could think of...

Gideon

Uh, Manson.

Hotch

Then there was Henry...

Gideon

Lee Lucas.

Hotch

And Jeffrey...

Gideon

Dahmer?

Hotch

There's just too many of them.

Gideon

Kind of hard to feel good about catching one of them when you know there're 50 more of them still out there.

Hotch

Yeah, we're set.

Morgan

Hotch, listen, they're gonna be sending us bomb fragments by this afternoon. I'm the only one with an ATF background. So if you'd like me to stay behind and supervise the bomb profile, I'm on that.

Hotch

Morgan, you wouldn't be afraid to be out in the field with a bomber, now, would you?

Morgan

You know, maybe it's not the bomber that I'm worried about.

Hotch

I thought we were past all that.

Morgan

Hotch, Boston sent Gideon into a post-traumatic tailspin. How do we know that won't happen again?

Hotch

Morgan, I'll tell you what. Why don't we concentrate on profiling the bomber, and not Gideon?

Morgan

Copy that.

Hotch

She runs the Crimes Against Children Unit in Maryland.

Morgan

Always wanted to meet her.

Really? I heard she was a bitch.

Gideon

Nobody ever called you that, Katie.

Well, not to my face.

Morgan

All right, guys, listen up, we might have something. 12 men were interviewed. Eight are back in prison, one is dead, one lives in California, and two have last-known addresses within 10 minutes of us: a Patrick Forest and a Michael Earlson.

Patrick Forest isn't smart enough to put this all together.

Hotch

What about Michael Earlson?

Definitely.

Greenaway

[after turning in her credentials] You know, when I first started this job, the sound of my phone ringing, a call from the Bureau, I used to get so excited. The blood would race through my veins. And now, that same sound, it paralyzes me. I'm not the same person anymore. That night at Lee's, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing.

Hotch

Even though you killed someone?

Greenaway

I guess that's it, then. You know, when I first joined the team, I couldn't figure out why you never, ever smile. Now I think I'm actually gonna miss that.

Hotch

I'm gonna miss you too.

Aaron Hotchner

Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day. Sometimes you do everything right, everything exactly right, and still you feel like you failed. Did it need to end that way? Could something have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place? 89 murders at the pig farm; the deaths of Mason and Lucas Turner make 91 lives snuffed out. Kelly Shane will go home and try to recover, to reconnect with her family, but she'll never be a child again. William Hightower, who gave his leg for his country, gave the rest of himself to avenge his sister's murder. That makes 93 lives forever altered, not counting family and friends, in a small town in Sarnia, Ontario, who thought monsters didn't exist, until they learned that they spent their lives with one. And what about my team? How many more times will they be able to look into the abyss? How many more times before they won't ever recover the pieces of themselves that this job takes? [Hotch enters his apartment, pours himself a drink and raises it to his lips. He freezes as a hooded figure appears behind him with a gun in hand and turns around to see the barrel pointed at his chest.] Like I said, sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day.

You should have made a deal.

Hotch

Sometimes, the day just... [the screen cuts to black as a gunshot rings out] ...ends.