Kolchak: The Night Stalker quotes

Carl Kolchak

If Chicago Bears and Green Berets aren't safe on the streets of Chicago, who is?

Carl Kolchak

I promised I'd show up with a haircut, a new hat, and pressed suit... but I lie a lot.

Carl Kolchak

[voiceover] Tuesday, 11:15 pm. If you know anything about Chicago politics, you'll understand why a 63-year-old ward captain was braving the ungentle hour and the less-gentle streets. You see, Ward Captain Leo J. Ramutka was returning hone from a wake: an Auf Wiedersehen to a loyal, registered voter he knew would one day meet him at that great polling station in the sky. What Ward Captain Ramutaka failed to foresee was how soon that meeting would be.

But a knight - in armor? Make me believe that, Carl, because if I find you're shooting me through the grease, it'll have a definite detrimental effect on how we interface with each other.

[to Kolchak] You are a man who has resorted to lies and chicanery to the point of being pathological. I believe that you suffer from autosuggestion; and, in an obsessive desire to win approval expressed through the need for a big story, you convince yourself that what you want to be true *is* true. In short... I believe your brain has turned to onion dip.

Carl Kolchak

What is important is that it takes 420 pounds pressure - psi. - to crush a telephone. Now, it says right here that a medieval knight in full armor and in full weaponry weighs well over 400 pounds.

Tony Vincenzo

Oh, I feel much better. All my life I wanted to know that a medieval knight could crush a telephone.

He was stabbed.

Carl Kolchak

Stabbed?

[Makes a stabbing motion toward his chest] You know.

Carl Kolchak

Yes, of course. But... stabbed by what?

Fair question. Something round and sharp. I'd say, a structural facsimile to an ice pick.

Carl Kolchak

Ice pick.

There is, however, one disconcerting wrinkle to that premise. This particular instrument would have to have a three-inch diameter.

Carl Kolchak

Then it isn't an ice pick!

All right, I'll buy that. I can buy a direct question, and I respect you for it.

Carl Kolchak

[totally confused] Thank you, Captain.

You're Kolchak?

Carl Kolchak

Yeah, that's right.

You're the one the precinct captains are always talking about?

Carl Kolchak

What do they say?

That you're a pinwheel.

Hey, why don't you take another cab?

[speaking with a hangover] Who do you think you're talking to, cabbie? I am the president of my own feed company. I flew here first class. I'm staying at the Randolph, the biggest hotel in the world. Twenty-four hundred rooms.

Hey, sport, you are not staying at the biggest hotel in the world. The Hotel Rossiya in Moscow has thirty-two hundred rooms and your hotel's nothing.

[pauses] Who counts Communists?

Tony Vincenzo

Carl, do you mind if I read the copy? After all, I am the bureau chief here.

Carl Kolchak

Yes, absolutely, Tony. Absolutely. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I'll spitball a few ideas at cha.

Tony Vincenzo

Spitballing a few ideas is when you start a feature, not when you're polishing it.

Carl Kolchak

No, no. That's the way I work, Tony. See, I spit and polish at the same time.

Ron Updyke

With the proper food and exercise, you should be able to do everything at ninety that you can do at nineteen.

Carl Kolchak

Now, if you can help me, I, uh, I can make it worth your while.

How do you know how much my while is worth?

Did a guy come in here wearing a seersucker suit with red hair?

There was a Mr. Kolchak. I believe he was with a nickel firm in New Mexico.

He's got nothing to do with nickel. He's the proverbial bad penny. Now, where is he?

Carl Kolchak

Kindness!... That woman is about as kind as a Sturmbannführer.

Tony Vincenzo

[Angrily, in reply to Kolchak who criticized the way he's eating] Don't tell me what to do with my mouth!