The Departed Cunning and Cleverness Quotes

Colin is right, you know. Captain Queenan is a smart dude, and sooner or later, he's going to find a way to figure out who the rat in his department is. Now, Costello thinks that just threatening Colin is the best way to get something out of him. But Colin thinks he can do things a whole lot better if he stays calm and does things his way.

When Colin is a young boy, he already understands quotes from James Joyce—though to be fair, the quote is actually something James Joyce himself took from John Milton's Paradise Lost, but we'll give the kid a free pass on this one. He's still smart, as we come to understand from the moment we meet him. This is one of the things that Frank Costello likes about him, too.

As Dignam not so subtly puts it, he thinks that Billy Costigan shouldn't be a cop, because the kid is just too darn smart. He thinks that Billy is just a kid who's out to prove something to himself by joining the police force—and a knucklehead like Dignam has no time for this.

Everything gets crazy when Billy punches Dignam in the face during an argument. Queenan tries to calm things down by reminding Billy that his cover would totally be blown if anyone saw him punch a cop and not get arrested. Looks like he's the only one actually being smart at this point—which makes sense when you consider how much stress Billy is under.

Queenan is no fool, and he's smart enough to realize that Costello must have someone inside Special Investigations. There's just too much that the dude knows for him not to have someone on the inside.

When Sergeant Dignam himself has no ideas on how to catch Costello's mole, it's up to the clever Billy to come up with an idea for how to do it. Billy starts feeding Dignam very specific info and tells him to relay it to certain people in the department. Then Billy will listen to see if anyone on Costello's end starts talking about it. If they do, he'll be able to narrow down who could have possibly passed on the info, which is pretty clever of him.

By the end of the movie, Colin knows that Billy has found out about him being the mole in the police department. But he has erased Billy from the database and thus destroyed the dude's credibility. So when Billy tries to arrest him, Colin still seems pretty confident that there's not much the guy can do to him. Or maybe Colin is just bluffing, because it's not long before he begs Billy to just kill him.

Costello knows the drill when it comes to getting away with murder. It involves picking out some other mobster you already hate and planting the gun in his car. And the whole thing just works like a charm without any attention being thrown Costello's way.

If there's one thing that Costello really admires, it's resourcefulness. That's why he quotes John Lennon while trying to explain to Billy the value of getting the most out of any situation.

Queenan is trying to find Billy things to do that actually draw on his extraordinary abilities. He's had the poor kid working undercover for over a year now, and Billy's mind is starting to get fried with stress. That's why he hopes to make one final case against Costello by catching him with stolen microprocessors. Unfortunately, the whole thing doesn't work out; Costello is just too clever.