Mrs. Iselin quotes

View Quote [repeated line, to Raymond] Why don't you pass the time with a game of solitaire?

View Quote Raymond, if we were at war, and you were suddenly to become infatuated with the daughter of a Russian agent, wouldn't you expect me to come to you and object, and beg you to stop the entire thing before it was too late? Well we are at war. It's a Cold War, but it will get worse and worse until every man, woman, and child in this country will have to stand up and be counted, to say whether they are on the side of right and freedom or on the side of the Thomas Jordans of this country. I will go with you to Washington, tomorrow if you like, and I will show you do****ented proof that this man stands for evil, that he is evil, and that his whole life is devoted to undermining everything that you and I and Johnny, and every freedom-minded American--

View Quote [To her husband, Sen. Iselin] It has occurred to me that Tom Jordan's daughter Jocelyn... so I might have been a little hasty. Anyway, times change. I now think she would make Raymond an excellent wife. She's been living in Paris for the past two years. I have word she'll be coming home soon and when she does, I think we should give a little party.

View Quote [To Sen. Iselin] I keep telling you not to think. You're very, very good at a great many things, but thinking, hon', just simply isn't one of them. You just keep shouting "Point of Order, Point of Order" into the television cameras and I will handle the rest.

View Quote [To Raymond] It's been decided that you will be dressed as a priest to get away in the pandemonium afterwards. Chunjin will give you a two-piece Soviet Army's sniper's rifle that fits nicely into a special bag. There's a spotlight booth that won't be in use. It's up under the roof on the 8th Avenue side of the Garden. You will have absolutely clear, protected shooting. You are to shoot the Presidential nominee through the head. And Johnny will rise gallantly to his feet and lift Ben Arthur's body in his arms, stand in front of the microphones and begin to speak. The speech is short, but it's the most rousing speech I've ever read. It's been worked on here and in Russia on and off for over eight years. I shall force someone to take the body away from him. And Johnny will leave those microphones and those cameras with blood all over him, fighting off anyone who tries to help him, defending America even if it means his own death, rallying a nation of television-viewers into hysteria to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy. Now this is very important. I want the nominee to be dead about two minutes after he begins his acceptance speech, depending on his reading time under pressure. You are to hit him right at the point that he finishes the phrase, "nor would I ask of any fellow American in defense of his freedom that which I would not gladly give myself - my life before my liberty." Is that absolutely clear?

View Quote I know you will never entirely comprehend this, Raymond, but you must believe I did not know it would be you. I served them. I fought for them. I'm on the point of winning for them the greatest foothold they would ever have in this country. And they paid me back by taking your soul away from you. I told them to build me an assassin. I wanted a killer from a world filled with killers and they chose you because they thought it would bind me closer to them. [She places the sides of his face in her outstretched hands.] But now, we have come almost to the end. One last step. And then when I take power, they will be pulled down and ground into dirt for what they did to you. And what they did in so contemptuously under-estimating me.