[Lily tries to convince Picard to self-destruct the Enterprise, but he is defiant.]
Lily Sloane:
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your little quest. Captain Ahab has to go hunt his whale!
Jean-Luc Picard:
[offended] What?
Sloane:
You do have books in the 24th-century?
Picard:
This is not about revenge!
Sloane:
Liar!
Picard:
[agitated] This is about saving the future of humanity!
Sloane:
Jean-Luc, blow up the damn ship!!
Picard:
NO! NOOOOOOOOO!!! [smashes a display case in anger; Both pause, shocked] I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!
Sloane:
[looking at the broken remains of the Enterprise-D model] You broke your little ships. [pause] See you around, Ahab.
Picard:
[softly, to himself] "And he piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon he would have shot his heart upon it."
Sloane:
What?
Picard:
Moby Dick.
Sloane:
Actually, I never read it.
Picard:
Ahab spent years hunting the white whale that crippled him; but in the end, it destroyed him and his ship.
Sloane:
I guess he didn't know when to quit.
