"X-Files" - "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" Quiz

Answer: Shakespeare

The line read, "For nothing can seem foul to those that win." It was taken from "Henry IV" and no doubt referred to how the Cigarette-Smoking Man excused his actions and continued on in life.

Answer: Trust No One

This seemed to be a tenet common to CSM and Mulder!

Answer: true

In military training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, CSM was reading "The Manchurian Candidate" on his cot. His friend, Bill Mulder, told him to just go see the movie, to which CSM replied, "I'd rather read the worst novel ever written than sit through the best movie ever made."

Answer: JFK

A good start for Mulder; he'd be learning to speak in all the terms necessary for theorizing conspiracies! Just after Bill Mulder shared the story, CSM was called into a meeting where he began his illustrious career as a covert operative.

Answer: curtain rods

Under the guise of working with Oswald in support of Fidel Castro, CSM had Oswald hide some curtain rods "on the sixth floor of the book depository behind the curtains, against the back wall." This, of course, later appeared as incriminating evidence against Oswald.

Answer: storm drain

CSM crawled through the water system and hid in the storm drain. When the motorcade approached, one of the onlookers appeared to be giving CSM a signal by pumping his umbrella in the air. When the cars approached, CSM took aim and fired, assassinating JFK.

Answer: movie theatre

CSM was in the theatre and watched Oswald get arrested by the police. Then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag. He had previously said he never touched cigarettes and warned Oswald against the adverse health effects of smoking. Having completed his first heinous act in the name of governmental conspiracy, though, it seemed that he was ready to start smoking. Later, when CSM got news of his story's publication, he typed out a letter of resignation and seemed resolved to quit smoking, as though the cigarettes were part of his shadowy government personality.

Then, when the story turned out to be a disaster, he turned back to smoking and continued on with his life of conspiracies.

Answer: writing

As CSM listened to a Martin Luther King Jr. speech, he worked on his story "Take a Chance: A Jack Colquitt Adventure". He later received numerous rejection letters from publishers to whom he'd sent the manuscript. Because the story seemed largely autobiographical, the rejections probably stung that much more!

Answer: no

When asked who would be ordered to carry out the assassination, CSM said, "I'll do it myself. I have too much respect for the man."

Answer: OJ Simpson trial

They were running down a list of domestic unrest issues. Apparently, CSM had instructed that the Rodney King trial be moved to Simi Valley. One of the men then told CSM that he was working on the Oscar nominations and asked if he had any preference. CSM said he didn't, but said, "What I don't want to see is the Bills winning the Super Bowl.

As long as I'm alive, that doesn't happen." Then the men discussed how CSM had used a concealed needle to inject the Russian goalie's with a bit of novocaine in the 1980 Olympics, helping the American team come to their miraculous win.

Answer: flipped a coin

Deep Throat reminded CSM of the security resolution that dictated "Any country capturing such an entity is responsible for its immediate extermination" and offered him a gun, saying "I'm the liar. You're the killer." CSM responded, "Your lies have killed more in a day than I have in a lifetime. I've never killed anybody." Deep Throat retorted, "Maybe I'm not the liar." CSM took a quarter out of his pocket and flipped it, calling heads while it was in the air.

When it landed on heads, CSM told Deep Throat, "Go ahead. Make history." As he watched Deep Throat enter the chamber where the alien was being kept on life support and shoot it, CSM took out a cigarette and smoked solemnly.

Answer: "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation"

CSM read her thesis from the University of Maryland and orchestrated her assignment to the X-Files. That doesn't sound like any paper I'd want to spend months working on!

Answer: false

CSM was at the meeting where she got her assignment, but he just stood and smoked while observing.

Answer: a box of chocolates

CSM had just bought his published story, but was crushed because the ending had been butchered by the crass publishers. He sat smoking on a bench, and when a vagrant sat down next to him, he went into a cynical rant: "Life is like a box of chocolates: a cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. You're stuck with this undefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while, there's a peanut butter cup, or an English toffee.

But they're gone too fast, the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits, filled with hardened jelly and teeth-crunching nuts, and if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you've got left is a... is an empty box... filled with useless, brown paper wrappers."

Answer: false

Over the course of the episode, it seemed CSM was setting up his rifle so as to assassinate one of the Lone Gunmen. However, when Frohike walked into the hall at the end and was clearly in CSM's rifles crosshairs, CSM refrained from killing him, saying, "I can kill you whenever I please... But not today."