Nadine Tolliver quotes from Madam Secretary

Nadine

(After Elizabeth seeks her advice for a hiring decision) Everyone is someone else's guy, until they're your guy.

Nadine

How can I say this with love and respect? Huh. No one cares.

Nadine

You wanted to restore a world your mother lost?

Nadine

I've charted out all ten of his wives by their names and ranks. Basically, it's a seniority system. You look like you have a question.

Elizabeth

Um... Yes. Why are we doing this?

Nadine

The chart?

Elizabeth

The dinner.

Jay

The intel on the prison location was bad and when the special forces made their way inside the structure they found goats.

Elizabeth

Is that code for something?

Jay

No Ma’am, actual goats.

Nadine

It was disinformation.

Jay

The good news is that there were no casualties, and no goats were harmed.

Elizabeth

That’s just not helpful.

Nadine

It’s alright to address his wives by their first names, but be advised they probably won’t have much to say. Most of them don’t speak English. Unless you speak Swazi?

Elizabeth

French, German, Arabic, Farsi, a year of Spanish in high school.

Nadine

So you’ll just smile a lot.

Daisy

That exchange with the king is already trending Madam Secretary. Twitter is blowing up. People love it.

Elizabeth

Well, not everyone's going to love it. Matt, prepare a statement for tomorrow. We may have to call a press conference.

Matt

I'm already on it.

Nadine

Do you want this to become an issue?

Elizabeth

Yes! I think we've spent enough time on my look.

Daisy

World health, education, war on women... How do you want to frame it?

Elizabeth

All of the above.

Jay

It's a strong message. It'll play well in the polls. Not that I, you know, care about polls.

Nadine

Nice work, Madam Secretary.

Elizabeth

Thank you.

Nadine

The ambassador's office is still saying he doesn't want reinforcements.

Elizabeth

I know Paul. He was a visiting scholar when I was at UVA. He wore cowboy boots with a suit and drove a Harley. He's not a man whose sense of environment you can trust.

Jay

Not without going through Everar Burke. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Fighting off Jihad is a cakewalk compared to getting anything past him.

Elizabeth

What kind of guy is he?

Jay

Slow, methodical... cheap.

Nadine

It'll take us a month to get a meeting.

Elizabeth

I mean, what does he like? Fruit baskets? Steak? Is flirting gonna get me anywhere? Everybody has a weakness.

Daisy

It's an easy spin. There's a difference between philosophical thought, academia and practical application... work in action

Matt

Well, if it's so... easy, why don't you give me the headline to that? Uh, "Secretary of State Discovers that Doing is More Challenging than Talking About Doing"?

Daisy

And we still have to explain the mystery daughter.

Blake

Not a mystery daughter.

Nadine

Blake... everyone appreciates your allegiance to your boss.

Blake

Well, she is not my boss, she's our boss.

Nadine

That's all we have for now.

Elizabeth

Only 47 apologies? I was just getting warmed up. (chuckles) How'd I do?

Nadine

No one's launched any missiles at us, yet.

Nadine

You have another 23 apology calls to make this morning.

Elizabeth

Good morning, Nadine.

Nadine

Oh. You really want to start with that every morning?

Elizabeth

I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.

Elizabeth

He's Top Secret SCI.

Nadine

She gave you that?

Blake

You Jedi mind-tricked her, didn't you ma'am?

Nadine

(About Jed Heller aka Viper) He has, uh, schistosomiasis. It's a rare African disease caused by an... infestation of worms in the skin.

Elizabeth

A worm disease. Fitting.