The Big Short (film)

"I am happy when I'm unhappy."

"And I'm getting madder and madder, and I ask this guy how he sleeps at night knowing he's ripping off working people and he just leaves. He doesn't say a word. He just walks away from the lunch. So, am I the fucked up one, or is he?"

"[On the phone] Let me ask you this: What company treats its customers that shittily and succeeds?...Fine, okay, Goldman."

"So, mortgage bonds are dog shit, and CDO's are dog shit wrapped in cat shit?"

"The banks have given us 25% interest rates on credit cards. They have screwed us on student loans that we can never get out from under. Then this guy walks into my office and says those same banks got greedy, they lost track of the market, and I can profit off of their stupidity? Fuck yeah, I want him to be right!"

"[Regarding Vennett] I can't hate him. He's so transparent in his self-interest, that I kind of respect him. Would I buy a car from him? No."

"It's two simple questions: Is there a bubble? And if there is, how exposed are the banks?"

"We live in an era of fraud in America. Not just in banking, but in government, education, religion, food, even baseball... What bothers me isn't that fraud is not nice. Or that fraud is mean. For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short-sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually, you get caught, things go south. When the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did."

"I'm going to try to find moral redemption at the roulette table."

"Holy shit. All this time I've been trying to figure out who it is I'm betting against, and it's Morgan-Stanley. Which is me."

"We're going to wait and we're going to wait and we're going to wait until they feel the pain until they start to bleed."

"They knew. They knew the taxpayers would bail them out. They weren't being stupid; they just didn't care."

"I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people."

"[Last line of the movie] Okay...sell it all."

"That's a nice haircut, did you do it yourself?"

"Lawrence, I don't know how to be sarcastic."

"I may have been early, but I'm not wrong."

"[Final letter to his investors] I met my wife through Match.com. My profile said, "I am a medical student with only one eye, an awkward social manner, and $145,000 in student loans." She wrote back, "You're just what I've been looking for." She meant "honest", so let me be honest. Making money is not like what I thought it would be. This business kills the part of life that is essential, the part that has nothing to do with business. For the past two years, my insides have felt like they've been eating themselves. All the people that I respected won't talk to me anymore, except through lawyers. People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar. And I am not, nor ever have been, "familiar." So...so I have come to the sullen realization that I must close down the fund. Sincerely, Michael J. Burry, M.D."

"The NSA has a $52-billion budget and the ability to monitor tens of millions of calls a second. You think they're not using it?"

"Do you realize what you just did? You just bet against the American economy."

"If we're right, people lose homes. People lose jobs, people lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about fucking banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here's a number - every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?"

"Just...don't fucking dance."

"I'm trying to sell $200 million worth of securities...in a pub...it smells like sheep."

"If you don't want the offer, you can just hang up...that's what I thought."

"The largest bank in France just froze its money-market accounts. This thing's starting to hit across Europe. Greece and Iceland are finished, Spain's teetering."

"You guys said you wanted to be rich, now you're rich."

"[Opening monologue] In the late '70s, banking wasn't a job you went into to make large sums of money. It was a fucking snooze, filled with losers. Like selling insurance or accounting. And if banking was boring, then the bond department at the bank was straight up comatose. We all know about bonds. You give 'em to your snot-nosed kid when he turns 15; maybe, when he's 30, he makes a hundred bucks. Boring. That is until Lewis Ranieri came on the scene at Salomon Brothers. You might not know who he is, but he changed your life more than Michael Jordan, the iPod, and YouTube put together. You see, Lewis didn't know it yet, but he had already changed banking forever with one simple idea."

"The money came raining down, and for the first time, the banker went from the country club to the strip club. Pretty soon, stocks and savings were almost inconsequential. They were doing $50, $100, $200 billion in mortgage bonds and dozens of other securities a year, and America barely noticed as its number one industry became boring old banking. And then, one day, almost 30 years later, in 2008, it all came crashing down. In the end, Lewis Ranieri's mortgage-backed security mutated into a monstrosity that collapsed the whole world economy, and none of the experts or leaders or talking heads had a clue it was coming. I'm guessing most of you still don't really know what happened. Yeah, you got a soundbite you repeat so you don't sound dumb but come on. But there were some who saw it coming. While the whole world was having a big old party, a few outsiders and weirdos saw what no one else could. Not me. I'm not a weirdo, I'm pretty fucking cool, but we'll meet again later. These outsiders saw the giant lie at the heart of the economy, and they saw it by doing something the rest of the suckers never thought to do: They looked."

"Let me put it this way: I'm standing in front of a burning house, and I'm offering you fire insurance on it."

"Is this America's angriest hedge fund?"

"Now their foot's on fire, they think their steak is done, and you're surprised?"

"Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I'll have my wife's brother arrested."

"[Watching Mark talk with Wing Chau] Look at his face, he looks like the bad guy from Dune."

"And Caesar wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer."

"I'm JACKED! I'M JACKED TO THE TITS!"

"[Looking at his bonus check of $47 million] So, I was right. I took a rash of shit for 2 years, but I was right and everyone was wrong. And, yeah, I got a big bonus for it. Sue me, you know? It's a lot of money, I know. I can feel you judging me. That's palpable. But, hey, I never said I was the hero of this story."

"Margot Robbie: [In a bubble bath with a glass of champagne] Basically, Lewis Ranieri's mortgage bonds were amazingly profitable for the big banks. They made billions and billions on their 2% fee they got for selling each of these bonds. But then, they started running out of mortgages to put in them. After all, there are only so many homes and so many people with good enough jobs to buy them, right? So, the banks started filling these bonds with riskier and riskier mortgages. [Butler pours more champagne into her glass] (Thank you, Benjamin) That way, they can keep that profit machine churning, alright? By the way, these risky mortgages are called "subprime." So, whenever you hear the word "subprime," think "shit." Our friend, Michael Burry, found out that these mortgage bonds that were supposedly 65% AAA, were actually just, mostly, full of shit, so now, he's going to "short" the bonds, which means "to bet against." Got it? Good...[Takes a sip of champagne] Now, fuck off."

"Lawrence Fields: Get me my fucking money back, you motherfucker."

"Cynthia Baum: The therapist called. You did it again!"

"Cynthia Baum: You're not a saint. Saints don't live on Park Avenue."

"Charlie Geller: Will you listen to me?! This, like, the end of capitalism! This is like the Dark Ages all over again!"

"Pub patron: [To Ben] Are you a drug dealer or a banker? Because if you're a banker, you can fuck right off!"

"Jamie Shipley: This level of criminality is unprecedented, even for fucking Wall Street!"

"Christian Bale - Dr. Michael Burry"

"Steve Carell - Mark Baum"

"Ryan Gosling - Jared Vennett"

"Brad Pitt - Ben Rickert"

"John Magaro - Charlie Geller"

"Finn Wittrock - Jamie Shipley"

"Hamish Linklater - Porter Collins"