"I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I gotta admit the truth. It turned me on."

"One night, Bobby Vinton sent us champagne. There was nothing like it. I didn't think there was anything strange in any of this. You know, a twenty-one-year-old kid with such connections. He was an exciting guy. He was really nice. He introduced me to everybody. Everybody wanted to be nice to him. And he knew how to handle it."

"See, the hardest thing for me was leaving the life. I still love the life. And we were treated like movie stars with muscle. We had it all, just for the asking. Our wives, mothers, kids, everybody rode along. I had paper bags filled with jewelry stashed in the kitchen. I had a sugar bowl full of coke next to the bed. Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I'd bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I'd either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies. Didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. When I was broke I would go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over. And that's the hardest part. Today, everything is different. There's no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food. Right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook."

"It was easy for all of us to disappear. My house and cars were either registered in the name of my wife or my mother-in-law. My driver's license and social security number were phony. I never voted; never paid taxes. My birth certificate, arrest sheet, and my service record from the Army were all that existed to prove to the government I was ever alive."

"If you're part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they're going to kill you. It doesn't happen that way. There weren't any arguments or curses like in the movies. So your murderers come with smiles. They come as your friends, the people who have cared for you all of your life, and they always seem to come at a time when you're at your weakest and most in need of their help."

"For a second, I thought I was dead, but when I heard all the noise I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If they had been wiseguys, I wouldn't have heard a thing. I would've been dead."

"[about Tommy's murder] It was revenge for Billy Batts, and a lot of other things. And there was nothing that we could do about it. Batts was a made man and Tommy wasn't. And we had to sit still and take it. It was among the Italians. It was real greaseball shit. They even shot Tommy in the face so his mother couldn't give him an open coffin at the funeral."

"You know, we always called each other goodfellas. Like you said to, uh, somebody, "You're gonna like this guy. He's all right. He's a good fella. He's one of us." You understand? We were goodfellas. Wiseguys. But Jimmy and I could never be made because we had Irish blood. It didn't even matter that my mother was Sicilian. To become a member of a crew you've got to be one hundred per cent Italian so they can trace all your relatives back to the old country. See, it's the highest honor they can give you. It means you belong to a family and crew. It means that nobody can fuck around with you. It also means you could fuck around with anybody just as long as they aren't also a member. It's like a license to steal. It's a license to do anything. As far as Jimmy was concerned with Tommy being made, it was like we were all being made. We would now have one of our own as a member."

"[after the Lufthansa heist] It made him sick to have to turn money over to the guys who stole it. He'd rather whack 'em. Anyway, what did I care? I wasn't asking for anything and besides, Jimmy was making nice money with me through my Pittsburgh connections. [showing a montage of dead gangsters] But still, months after the robbery they were finding bodies all over. [police surround a truck, open it to see a dead man hanging on a hook like a meat husk] When they found Carbone in the meat truck, he was frozen so stiff it took them two days to thaw him out for the autopsy."

"See, you know when you think of prison, you get pictures in your mind of all those old movies with rows and rows of guys behind bars...But it wasn't like that for wiseguys. It really wasn't that bad. Excepting that I missed Jimmy. He was doing his time in Atlanta...I mean, everybody else in the joint was doing real time, all mixed together, living like pigs. But we lived alone. And we owned the joint."

"Saturday night was for wives, but Friday night at the Copa was always for the girlfriends."

"[Henry and Jimmy are dangling a man who owes Paulie money over the lion enclosure at the Tampa Zoo] They must really feed each other to the lions down there because the guy gave the money right up and we got to spend the rest of the weekend at the track. Then I couldn’t believe what happened, when we got home, we were all over the newspaper. At first I didn’t even know why we got picked up but then I found out that the guy we roughed up turned out to have a sister working as a typist for the FBI. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the fucking people. She gave up everybody; Jimmy, me, even her brother. Took the jury six hours to bring us in guilty. The judge gave Jimmy and me ten years like he was giving away candy."

"For most of the guys, killings got to be accepted. Murder was the only way that everybody stayed in line. You got out of line, you got whacked. Everybody knew the rules. But sometimes, even if people didn't get out of line, they got whacked. I mean, hits just became a habit for some of the guys. Guys would get into arguments over nothing and before you knew it, one of them was dead. And they were shooting each other all the time. Shooting people was a normal thing. It was no big deal. We had a serious problem with Billy Batts. This was really a touchy thing. Tommy'd killed a made guy. Batts was part of the Gambino crew and was considered untouchable. Before you could touch a made guy, you had to have a good reason. You had to have a sitdown, and you better get an okay, or you'd be the one who got whacked."

"Now the guy's got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy's gotta come up with Paulie's money every week, no matter what. Business bad? "Fuck you, pay me." Oh, you had a fire? "Fuck you, pay me." Place got hit by lightning, huh? "Fuck you, pay me." Also, Paulie could do anything. Especially run up bills on the joint's credit. And why not? Nobody's gonna pay for it anyway. And as soon as the deliveries are made in the front door, you move the stuff out the back and sell it at a discount. You take a two hundred dollar case of booze and you sell it for a hundred. It doesn't matter. It's all profit. And then finally, when there's nothing left, when you can't borrow another buck from the bank or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match."

"For us to live any other way was nuts. Uh, to us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day and worried about their bills were dead. I mean they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something, we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again."

"One day some of the kids from the neighborhood carried my mother's groceries all the way home. You know why? It was outta respect."

"Hundreds of guys depended on Paulie and he got a piece of everything they made. And it was tribute, just like in the old country, except they were doing it here in America. And all they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. And that's what it's all about. That's what the FBI could never understand. That what Paulie and the organization does is offer protection for people who can't go to the cops. That's it. That's all. They're like the police department for wiseguys."

"My father was always pissed off. He was pissed that he made such lousy money, he was pissed that my kid brother Michael was in a wheelchair, he was pissed that there were seven of us living in such a tiny house. After awhile he was mostly pissed because I hung around the cab stand. He knew what went on at that cab stand, and every once in a while I'd have to take a beating. But by then I didn't care. The way I saw it everybody takes a beating sometime."

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States. Even before I first wandered into the cabstand for an after-school job, I knew I wanted to be a part of them. It was there that I knew that I belonged. To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood that was full of nobodies. They weren't like anybody else. I mean, they did whatever they wanted. They double-parked in front of a hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. In the summer when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops."

"Paulie might've moved slow, but it was only because Paulie didn't have to move for anybody."

"Henny Youngman - Himself"

"Jerry Vale - Himself"

"Ray DeBenedictis - "Pete""

"Vincent Pastore - Man with Coat Rack"

"Samuel L. Jackson - Stacks Edwards"

"Tony Sirico - Tony Stacks"

"Michael Imperioli - Spider"

"Charles Scorsese - Vinnie"

"Kevin Corrigan - Michael Hill"

"Debi Mazar - Sandy"

"Suzanne Shepherd - Karen's Mother"

"He wanted out. He'd do anything to get there."

"Paul Mazaursky - Judge Feinstein"

"Emonte Salvato - Battaglia"

"Jamie Sanchez - Rudy"

"Rick Aviles - Quisqueya"

"Al Israel - Rolando"

"Angel Salazar - Walberto"

"John Ortiz (I) - Guajiro"

"Adrian Pasdar - Frankie"

"Frank Minucci - Tony Taglialucci"

"Jorge Porcel - Saso"

"Richard Foronjy - Pete Amadesso"

"Viggo Mortensen - Lalin"

"Joseph Siravo - Vinnie Taglialucci"

"James Rebhorn - Norwalk"

"Luis Guzman - Pachanga"

"Ingrid Rogers - Steffie"

"John Leguizamo - Benny Blanco"

"Penelope Ann Miller — Gail"