- Mulder: It's been said that fear of the unknown is an irrational response to the excesses of the imagination. But our fear of the everyday, of the lurking stranger and the sound of footfalls on the stairs, the fear of violent death and the primitive impulse to survive, are as frightening as any X-File; as real as the acceptance that it could happen to you.
- Agent Karen E. Kosseff: Is it your partner? Is there a problem with trust?
- Scully: No. I trust him as much as anyone. I trust him with my life.
- Mulder: You okay, Scully?
- Scully: Yeah. I've read about cases of desecrating the dead before but this is the first time I've seen it.
- Mulder: Nothing can prepare you for it; it's almost unimaginable.
- Scully: Why do they do it?
- Mulder: Well, some people collect salt and pepper shakers, fetishists collect dead things - fingernails and hair. No one quite knows why, though I've never really understood salt and pepper shakers myself.
- Mulder: You know, people videotape police beatings on darkened streets. They manage to spot Elvis in three cities across America every day, but no one saw a pretty woman being forced off the road in a rental car.
- Scully: A complete model or psychological profile of a death fetishist does not exist. The compulsion is a result of a complex misplacement of values and a deviation from cultural norms and social mores. He is more likely to be white, male and of average to above average intelligence. Cases of fetishism with IQs over 150 have been documented. The progression of the pathology moves from fantasy stage to the eventual acting out of fetishism impulses, including opportunistic homicide. Agent Mulder believes strongly that the suspect in this case is escalating towards this action. Once he begins to murder, the killing draws attention away from the deeper motive. A motive which most people, including law enforcement professionals, dare not imagine. It is somehow easier to believe as Agent Bocks does, in aliens and UFOs, than in the kind of inhuman monster who could prey on the living, to scavenge from the dead.
- Donald Addie Pfaster: Is your hair treated?
- Prostitute: What?
- Donald Addie Pfaster: Do you need a shampoo for chemically treated hair?
- Prostitute: You want me to shampoo my hair?