Films Directed By Martin Scorsese

"There's no niggers among the Natives! Niggers and Rabbits is one thing! BUT A NIGGER IN THE CHURCH, THAT'S SOMETHING ELESE!"

"You're gonna end up on a stake like your man did! GYUUUUURRGH!"

"Cameron Diaz - Jenny Everdeane"

"You know there's more of us coming off those boats everyday? Some say 15,000 Irish a week! Get all of us together and we ain't got a gang, we got an army!"

"Father! Jesus, did you know there's NIGGER IN YOUR CHURCH?!"

"The past is a torch that lights our way. Where our fathers have shown us the path, we shall follow. Our faith is the weapon most feared by our enemies. For thereby shall we lift our people up against those who would destroy us."

"Our name is called "The Dead Rabbits" to remind all of our suffering, and as a call to those who suffer still to join our ranks. However far they may have strayed from our common home across the sea. For with great numbers must come great strength in the salvation of our people."

"Jim Broadbent - Boss Tweed"

"John C. Reilly - Happy Jack"

"Lou Brown - Band leader"

"Shelley Hack - Cathy Long"

"Ed Herlihy - Himself"

"Sandra Bernhard - Masha"

"Jerry Lewis - Jerry Langford"

"Diahnne Abbott - Rita Keane"

"It's no laughing matter."

"Nobody knows Rupert Pupkin, but after 11:30 tonight no one will ever forget him."

"Wilson Crockett: I just don't buy the idea that there are that many people out there crazy enough to spend their lives in prison for a few minutes on television."

"Robert De Niro - Rupert Pupkin"

"A lot of you are probably wondering why Jerry couldn't make it this evening. Well, he's tied up, and I'm the one who tied him. [laughter] You think I'm joking, but that's the only way I could break into show business—by hijacking Jerry Langford. [laughter] I'm not kidding. Right now, Jerry Langford is strapped to a bedstead somewhere in the middle of this city. [laughter] Go ahead. Laugh. But the fact is . . . I'm here. Tomorrow you'll know I wasn't kidding, and you'll think I was crazy. But I figured it this way: better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime!"

"[to Pupkin, about Langford] All of a sudden, with a gun on him, he wants to make up and be friends. And, once he's out the door, what happens then?"

"This wasn't an easy decision for me, Jerry, believe me. For one thing, I knew it meant we could never be friends again and that hurt me. It's hard to lose a friend, even one who has let you down. You always hope you can patch things up. You know, a guy like me doesn't make friends that easily. Why didn't you just listen to the tape when I asked you? Then I wouldn't have to be doing all this. Was it really too much to expect, a few minutes of your time to listen to something I'd worked on my whole life?"

"Every King needs a Queen, Rita. I want you to be mine."

"[on tape] Now, Jerry. Before I begin, I just want to thank you for listening to this material and for the opportunity that you've given me. You know, lots of people think that guys like you, you know, people who have made it, lose their feeling for struggling young talent such as myself. But now I know from experience that those people are just cynics, embittered by their own failure. I know, Jerry, that you're as human as the rest of us, if not more so."

"[to Langford] I've got so much to tell you I just don't know what to begin with. Are you okay? [Langford mumbles, as he is bound and gagged] Good. Tell me if you're not. I guess you're wondering why I do stuff like this. I think it's because I'm a Leo, but my shrink says I'm pathologically rebellious and self-destructive. You don't think I'm self-destructive, do you? [Langford mumbles again] I knew you wouldn't. That's 'cause you're the only person in the world who really understands me."

"[to Jerry] Jesus, they certainly don't give you very good protection, do they? Look at you here. Who the hell is watching you? Any one of these freaks could just walk right up to you and do whatever he wants."

"Rita Keane: [to Pupkin] You call me up all junior and senior year. Night after night after night, right? And every time I'm wondering 'when is this guy going to stop talking and ask me out?' Well, now I know the answer. August twelfth, nineteen seventy-six. It only took you ten, eleven years to work up to it."

"[to Rita, about Marilyn Monroe] She wasn't a great actress, but she had a real gift for comedy. She died tragically, you know, alone, like so many of the world's most beautiful women. I'm going to see that doesn't happen to you, Rita."

"Official: We are met here in these extraordinary circumstances to join this man and this woman in holy wedlock. But, before we begin, let me voice a personal word of thanks to you, Rupert and to you, Rita, for choosing me to perform this prestigious ceremony. Because we are on prime time, I am going to discard my customary remarks in favor of a few personal reflections. When I was principal at Clifton High and these two were students, I had very little faith that Rupert here would amount to very much. But like his teachers and his fellow students, I underestimated this fine young man. Some say that this misjudgment is directly tied to my recent dismissal as head of the Clifton School System. But let me take this opportunity to set the record straight. Knowing that Rupert and Rita here were most certainly destined for a great career and a lifetime of happiness, I voluntarily stepped down. I would only here add my own wishes to those of millions of viewers for their continued health, wealth and boundless success. We'll be back to marry them in a minute, right after this word."

"Listen to me, Anthony. I got your head in a fucking vice. I'll squash your fucking head like a grapefruit if you don't give me a name. Don't make me have to do this, please. Don't make me be a bad guy, come on."

"[about Anthony Dogs' interrogation] To be truthful with you, I had to admire this fucking guy. He was one of the toughest Irishmen I ever met. This son-of-a-bitch was tough. For two days and two fucking nights, we beat the shit out of this guy. I mean, we even stuck ice picks in his balls. But he never talked. In the end, I had to put his fucking head in a vice."

"But I knew how to keep the bosses happy. Whenever they gave me little jobs to do, you know, to send a message, I would carry things out to a tee. Like the time Tony Dogs, who's supposed to be the new maniac tough guy in town, shot up one of Remo's bars. Here's a fucking guy, kills two of Remo's guys and a poor fucking waitress who's just working on her night off of all things. I mean, this guy's just begging to be made an example of."

"Dick Smothers - Senator"

"[About the bosses] These old greaseballs may not look it, but believe me, these are the men who secretly control Las Vegas, because they managed the Teamsters Union. The Teamsters Union was who you had to go to in order to borrow money to build a casino. And no one got approved for a loan from the Teamster's pension fund unless these guys in the room knew they were going to get their little suitcases."

"Got a lot of holes in the desert. And a lot of problems are buried in those holes. Except you gotta do it right. I mean, you gotta have the hole already dug before you show up with a package in the trunk. Otherwise, you're talking about a half hour or 45 minutes of digging. And who knows who's gonna be coming along in that time? Before you know it, you gotta dig a few more holes; you could be there all fucking night!"

"Frank Vincent - Frank Marino"

"The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today, it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it's like checking into an airport, and if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's all gone. You got a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some 25-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his social security number. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds. But in the end, I wound up right back where I started. I could still pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home. And why mess up a good thing? And that's that."

"The word was out. The bosses had enough of Nicky. They had enough. How much were they gonna take? So they made an example of him and his brother. They buried them while they were still breathing. They had other ideas for me."

"No matter what the feds or the papers might have said about my car-bombing, it was amateur night - and you could tell. Whoever it was, they put the dynamite under the passenger side. But what they didn't know - what nobody outside the factory knew - was that that model car was made with a metal plate under the driver's seat. It's the only thing that saved my life. The bombing was never authorized, but I suspect I know who lit the fuse. [cut to Nicky meeting up with his gang in the cornfield] And so did the powers that be."

"After Ginger took off, she wasn't much help to anybody. She found some pimps, lowlifes, druggies and bikers in L.A.. And in a few months, they went through all the money and all the jewels. After they found her body, I hired a private doctor to do another autopsy. He said they gave her a hot dose. In the end, all she had left was $3,600 in mint-condition coins."

"L. Q. Jones - Pat Webb"

"After all the threats and all the bullshit, it turned out Ginger didn't tell 'em anything. But by then, the Feds didn't need her, anyway. They had all the pieces they needed. And everybody began to tumble, one after the other... just like dominoes. Between Piscano complaining on a wire. Between Nicky, Ginger, me and my license... paradise... we managed to really fuck it all up."

"You wanna get rid of me? Here I am. Go ahead, get rid of me."

"[introducing Ace] He made his first bet when he was 15 years old, and he always made money. But he didn't bet like you or me. You know, having some fun with it, shit like that. He'd bet like a fucking brain surgeon. He had to know everything, this guy. He'd find the kind of inside stuff nobody else knew, and that's what he'd put his money on. Even back home, years ago, when we were first hanging out together, he'd know if the quarterback was on coke, if his girlfriend was knocked up. He'd get the wind velocity so he could judge the field goals. He even figured out the different bounce you got off the different kinds of wood they used on college basketball courts, y'know? He'd be working on this shit day and night. There was nothing about a game he was going to bet that he didn't know. Season after season, the prick was the only guaranteed winner that I ever knew, but he was so serious about it all, I don't think he ever enjoyed himself. But that's just the way he was."

"[to Ginger, about her and Lester planning to run away with Amy] Yeah, but I've been told that before, "We're working it out." You think that you're home... after what you just put me through with Amy, is a favor to me? So, counting the watch, let's say another four thousand for expenses over the weekend... of which you must have had a good time. I know he did. That's for sure. I know that... fuckin' piece of shit had a good fuckin' time. On my money. You might as well have fucked him, which you probably did anyway. (Ginger glares at him) You're lookin' at me a certain way. You - you're teary-eyed, huh? You're upset. You're a good actress, you know that? Good fuckin' actress. You can fuckin' get that pity out of people. I'm not a john, you understand? You always thought I was, but I'm not. And I'm not a sucker. That fuckin' pimp cocksucker. He's lucky I didn't kill him last time. Lucky he's fuckin' livin'. And if you would've stayed with Amy... and you would've ran away... you would've been fuckin' dead. Both of you. Dead. Dead."

"They had so much fucking money in there, you could build a house outta stacks of $100 bills. And the best part was that upstairs, the board of directors didn't know what the fuck was going on. I mean, to them, everything looked on the up-and-up, right? Wrong! The guys inside the counting room were all slipped in there to skim the joint dry. They'd do short counts, they'd lose fill slips. They'd even take cash right outta the drop boxes. And it was up to this guy, right here, standing in front of about 2 million dollars, to skim the cash off the top without anybody getting wise — the IRS, or anybody. Now, notice how in the count room, nobody ever seems to see anything. Somebody's always looking the other way. Now look at these guys. They look busy, right? They're counting money. Who'd want to bother them? I mean, God forbid they should make a mistake and forget to steal. Meanwhile, you're in and you're out, past the jack-off guard, who gets an extra C note a week just to watch the door. I mean, it's routine, business as usual — in, out, hello, goodbye — and that's all there is to it. Just another fat fuck, walking out of the casino with a suitcase. Now that suitcase was going straight to one place: right to Kansas City, which was as close to Las Vegas as the Midwest bosses could go without getting themselves arrested. That suitcase was all the bosses ever wanted, and they wanted it every month."

"Meeting in the middle of the desert always made me nervous. It's a scary place. I knew about the holes in the desert, of course, and everywhere I looked, there could have been a hole. Normally, my prospects of coming back alive from a meeting with Nicky were 99 out of 100. But this time, when I heard him say "a couple of hundred yards down the road," I gave myself 50/50."

"We all have a past! You have a past, I have a past, and my past is no worse than yours, but you guys think you have the right to pass judgment on me!"

"In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The boxmen are watching the dealers. The floormen are watching the boxmen. The pit bosses are watching the floormen. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shift bosses. I'm watching the casino manager. And the eye in the sky [the CCTV cameras] is watching us all."

"[To a cheater, after casino thugs have broken his accomplice's hand with a hammer] Alright, I'm going to give you a choice: You can either have the money and the hammer, or you can walk out of here. You can't have both."