Control: A shark can smell blood a mile off when he's hungry, and Mundt is hungry for our blood.


--Cyril Cusack (as Control) in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Control: We have to live without sympathy, don't we? We can't do that forever. One can't stay out of doors all the time. One needs to come in from the cold.
Alec Leamas: I'm an operator, Control, just an operator.
Control: There's a vacancy in Banking Section which might suit you.
Alec Leamas: Sorry, I'm an operational man. I'll take my pension. I don't want a desk job.
Control: You don't know what's on the desk.
Alec Leamas: Paper!
Control: [after taking a long sip from his tea cup] I want you to stay, uh, out in the cold... a little longer.


--Cyril Cusack (as Control) in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The Captain: Go on, Montag, all this philosophy, let's get rid of it. It's even worse than the novels. Thinkers and philosophers, all of them saying exactly the same thing: "Only I am right! The others are all idiots!"


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451

The Captain: Just tell me this, Montag: at a guess, how many literary awards would you say were made in this country on an average each year? 5? 10? 40? Not less than 1,200.


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451

The Captain: Listen to me, Montag. Once to each fireman, at least once in his career, he just itches to know what these books are all about. He just aches to know. Isn't that so?


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451

The Captain: Look, all stories of the dead, biography that's called, and autobiography. My life, my diary, my memoirs, my - intimate memoirs.


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451

The Captain: Robinson Crusoe, the Negroes didn't like that because of his man, Friday. And Nietzsche, Nietzsche, the Jews didn't like Nietzsche. Here's a book about lung cancer. You see, all the cigarette smokers got into a panic, so for everybody's peace of mind, we burn it.


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451

The Captain: The books have nothing to say.


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451

The Captain: These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be.


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451

The Captain: Trouble between you and the Pole, Montag?


--Cyril Cusack (as The Captain) in Fahrenheit 451