- Bill Tench: Holden, they're not gonna let you in with a sidearm.
- Holden Ford: The guy is six foot nine, weighs 300 pounds.
- Bill Tench: That's right.
- Holden Ford: So what's he gonna do?
- Bill Tench: He's gonna take the fuckin' thing away, kill you with it, and then have sex with your face.
- Edmund Kemper: You see, Bill, I knew a week before she died I was gonna kill her. She went out to a party, she got soused, she came home alone. I asked her how her evening went. She just looked at me. She said, For seven years. She said, "I haven't had sex with a man because of you, my murderous son." So I got a claw hammer and I beat her to death. Then I cut her head off, and I humiliated her. And I said, "There, now you've had sex." If there's one thing I know, it's this: A mother should not scorn her own son. If a woman humiliates her little boy, he will become hostile, and violent, and debased. Period.
- Holden Ford: You don't think you could benefit from psychiatry?
- Edmund Kemper: I already did all that in the institution. It didn't take. For me, I think surgery might give me the best chance.
- Holden Ford: And if surgery doesn't take, in this modern society, what do we do with the Ed Kempers of the world?
- Edmund Kemper: Well, isn't that your department?
- Holden Ford: From your perspective...
- Edmund Kemper: Death by torture?
- Unit Chief Shepard: Can you make him shut up?
- Bill Tench: I have not been able to, sir.
- Holden Ford: How do we get ahead of crazy if we don't know how crazy thinks?
- Unit Chief Shepard: I like you, Bill. I don't particularly like him, but I like you... Okay, you may continue with your little sideshow. However, no one can know about it. Clear? You will relocate yourselves to the basement beneath Behavioral Sciences, reporting directly and exclusively to me.
- Bill Tench: The basement? I'm 44 years old.
- Edmund Kemper: Cops like me because they can talk to me more than they can talk to their own wives, some of them.
- Edmund Kemper: Butchering people is hard work. Physically and mentally. I don't think people realize. You need to vent.
- Edmund Kemper: What are you writing down?
- Holden Ford: [freely showing his notebook] Oh, I just think it's an interesting choice of words, "vocation."
- Edmund Kemper: Well, what would you call it? A hobby? I'd say it's more than that. Look at the consequences. The stakes are very high.