- Margie Rees: [in shock] Spies? Spying? Guy's a *spy*?
- Goronwy Rees: Well, if you look at things in black-and-white...
- Anthony Blunt: [to Vasily, his Soviet controller] I'm a member of the Royal Household. I'm already listed as one of the great and good.
- Anthony Blunt: [opens a letter from Guy Burgess hinting at his defection to the USSR alongside Donald Maclean] "I wonder what's become of Waring. Guy."
- Anthony Blunt: [walks to his library, digs out an anthology of British poetry, and finds these lines by Robert Browning] "I wonder what's become of Waring / Since he gave us all the slip, / Chose land-travel or sea-faring, / Boots and chest, or staff and scrip, / Rather than pace up and down / Any longer in London-town?"
- [furiously]
- Anthony Blunt: Oh, Guy! You fool! Bloody fool!
- Goronwy Rees: I always suspected Donald joined the Comintern when you did.
- Guy Burgess: No, later... Donald did his best work for us when he was in Washington after the war, '44 to '48. Procured a high-grade official pass to the U.S. Atomic Commission. So if there's a balance of atom power between us and them - and there is - you could say it's broadly thanks to dear old Donald. Our world's that much safer from bloody American imperialism.
- Guy Burgess: [to Blunt, as they prepare to go to bed] I fully expected to loathe America, and I did. Boy oh boy.
- Margie Rees: You may have hated America, but it seems to have suited you. You look heaps better.
- Guy Burgess: [mockingly] Thank you, Matron.
- Guy Burgess: [to his Soviet controller, Vasily, as they walk in the park] MI-5 is rather like one's dear old nanny; you just have to tickle her in the right place.
- Margie Rees: [speaking of Guy] He's still a spy...
- Goronwy Rees: Well, if you insist, but as I said...
- Margie Rees: And you're his best friend...
- Goronwy Rees: Ha! Friendship's another matter.
- Margie Rees: And he's godfather to Thomas - I suppose that's part of his disguise...
- Goronwy Rees: Margie, please!
- Margie Rees: [inexorably] And I think *knowing* someone's a spy and not telling the police - or whoever one should tell - makes *you* sort of one, too.
- Goronwy Rees: [as if astounded] Report one's best friend?
- Margie Rees: Spies can't have friends - not *proper* friends. Because they tell too many lies.
- Guy Burgess: [on Maclean's impending defection to the USSR] I shan't be sorry to be shot of Donald. Arrogant sod, really.
- Anthony Blunt: But invaluable for the Cause.
- Goronwy Rees: [responding angrily to Blunt's pressure] Nor do I find your blackmail - for your *own* survival - being paraded as the Cambridge liberal conscience to be especially edifying!
- Anthony Blunt: [trying to suborn Goronwy's silence] So we're all of us in your hands, Rees. And your wife's.
- Goronwy Rees: Yes, I think that's true. She was horrified, by the way.
- Anthony Blunt: She thinks conventionally.
- Goronwy Rees: I would prefer to say "normally."
- Anthony Blunt: [sarcastically] Really... You telephoned MI-6 last night. Someone named David Footman.
- Goronwy Rees: [alarmed] How do you know that? Who told you?
- Anthony Blunt: One never leaves MI-5. *I* haven't.
- Guy Burgess: I've given up benzedrine, too.
- Anthony Blunt: Most improved boy in the class.
- Guy Burgess: In the school!
- Guy Burgess: Like it or not, *ducky,* you're one of us. Why else do you think I'm telling you all this?
- Goronwy Rees: Because you have no choice, for some reason.
- Anthony Blunt: [seeking to pressure Goronwy Rees into silence] It is difficult, of course, for me to appreciate how it is that a woman can mean so much to a man - as it is for me to see how an abstract concept, like one's country, is to be preferred to one's friend.
- Anthony Blunt: [to Goronwy Rees] Guy was always quoting it. "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
- [suddenly contemptuous]
- Anthony Blunt: But *you've* never had the guts, have you?