Elementary quotes

Sherlock Holmes, when did you become such a cliché? Standing over a grave, head heavy with dark thoughts. If this were a scene in a play, I'd have refused to perform it.

Sherlock

I was on my way to a meeting. I'm supposed to speak, you know. Well, I thought this would be a good place to collect my thoughts.

I'm sorry I let you down.

Sherlock

You didn't let me down. What you did has got nothing to do with me. I understand that. Came here today because, um, because I loved you very much. And I wanted you to know that you'll be missed.

[quoting from 'Waiting for Godot'] At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.

Sherlock Holmes

I came here to apologize. I owed you, and Detective Bell, a proper good-bye before I left. It was a difficult time. I was--I was thinking of no one but myself.

Capt. Gregson

Must have been a day that ended in "y."

Dr. Joan Watson

Those are singlestick moves. How the hell do you know...singlestick. You don't work for March. You work for Sherlock.

Kitty Winter

I don't work for anyone. I'm his new partner.

Sherlock Holmes

I had to determine how you'd fared in my absence. I wanted to know exactly how much to apologize for. Over the course of the last week, however, it's become clear that you've done remarkably well.

Dr. Joan Watson

The last week--that woman has been following me for a week?!

Sherlock Holmes

I'm torn really. I'm proud of her surveillance, I'm disappointed in your failure to detect it.

Dr. Joan Watson

I got into a baton fight with someone named Kitty?

Sherlock Holmes

The homicide that's been plaguing you--the file on your desk.

Det. Marcus Bell

The file that was in my drawer?

Det. Marcus Bell

I've never been to London. Hear it's a lot like New York. I guess you guys don't get the same number of gun deaths over there as we do, huh?

Kitty Winter

Not many countries do.

Sherlock Holmes

There's a term in psychology circles, functional fixedness, the understanding we develop as the brain matures that a given object has a given function. In layman's terms, it's "the right tool for the right job." Creativity, on the other hand, is often defined as the freedom from so limiting a cognitive bias. To his credit, Agent Boden has shown remarkable creativity. Everyone else looks at the seized inventory from Openshaw's company and they see a bunch of poison toys. Agent Boden looked at the very same inventory--

Kitty Winter

--and saw millions of dollars in street value of GHB.

What's this?!

Dr. Joan Watson

You're...

Not here. I'm not here! Remember that, OK?

Sherlock Holmes

Oh yes, heaven forfend your work with me should endanger your precious day job.

Dr. Joan Watson

You throw knives.

[to Sherlock] You know, it was supposed to be just you here.

Sherlock Holmes

Phillip is arguably the greatest knife-thrower in the world. Has been for decades. Only there's little money to be made in the impalement arts, so as a youth he turned to what you Americans term football.

Dr. Joan Watson

Is this a joke?

Sherlock Holmes

Phillip, head and heart.

Come on.

Sherlock Holmes

Head and heart!

Can I go?

Sherlock Holmes

Yeah. [Phillip leaves.] Fifteen years he spent throwing that misshapen ball around. Fifteen years. When I think of the acclaim he could have brought to competitive blade-slinging.

Sherlock Holmes

Your home, Watson, is utterly pleasant.

Dr. Joan Watson

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Sherlock Holmes

When you told me you wanted a life of your own I didn't realize you wanted the same life everyone else has.

Dr. Joan Watson

Everything OK?

Kitty Winter

Thank you for coming. Like I said on the phone, he just won't stop. You got any ideas?

Dr. Joan Watson

You're not planning to destroy the computer are you?!

Sherlock Holmes

No, I'm not planning to destroy the bloody computer!

Dr. Joan Watson

[to Kitty] Just ride it out. If he starts hitting things, use the fire extinguisher on him.

Sherlock Holmes

Watson, this is Mason. Like many of his generation, he's named after a profession his parents would never deign to practice--Hunter, Tanner, Cooper, Mason, so forth.

Yeah, like Sherlock is such a great name.

Sherlock Holmes

It's a nondisclosure agreement. I would like you to sign it.

Kitty Winter

Morning to you, too.

Sherlock Holmes

It is, for the most part, boilerplate. My secrets stay secret. I have powerful enemies, Kitty. I work every day to make more. You are privy to my method and my madness. So you see the risk I'm taking on, do you not?

Kitty Winter

I do, but we've worked together for months, so why all of a sudden--

Sherlock Holmes

I meant to have your signature from the beginning, but timely paperwork is a weakness of mine.

Kitty Winter

I hereby forego my right to tell my non-existent friends that I am pet-sitting a sociopathic tortoise.

Sherlock Holmes

Guarding a puddle? Been demoted have you?

Det. Marcus Bell

Haven't you heard? It's not the size of the crime scene that counts.

You're a son of a bitch, you know that? I told you what I told you in confidence. I told you because I had to tell someone, not because I wanted you to jump my partner in the middle of the street in front of half my precinct.

Capt. Gregson

He didn't get half of what he deserved.

Well I got the whole 15th--people who have no idea what was going on--trying to figure out why you did it. You're not saying anything. Stotz isn't saying anything. But I'm hearing whispers everywhere I go this morning. This is worse than what happened.

Capt. Gregson

The guy laid hands on you. Did you honestly expect me to do nothing?!

I am not nine years old anymore, Dad. I'm a cop. I can handle myself.