Goodfellas

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"[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."

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

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It was like he had two families. The first time I was introduced to all of them at once, it was crazy. Paulie and his brothers had lots of sons and nephews and almost all of them were named Peter or Paul. It was unbelievable. There must have been two dozen Peter’s and Paul’s at the wedding. Plus they were all married to girls named Marie. And they named all their daughter’s Marie. By the time I finished meeting everybody, I thought I was drunk!"

"Well, we weren't married to nine-to-five guys, but the first time I realized how different was when Mickey had a hostess party. They had bad skin and wore too much make-up. I mean, they didn't look very good. They looked beat-up. And the stuff they wore was thrown together and cheap. A lot of pant suits and double knits. And they talked about how rotten their kids were and about beating them with broom handles and leather belts. But that the kids still didn't pay any attention...After a while, it got to be all normal. None of it seemed like crimes. It was more like Henry was enterprising and that he and the guys were making a few bucks hustling, while the other guys were sitting on their asses waiting for hand-outs. Our husbands weren't brain surgeons. They were blue-collar guys. The only way they could make extra money, real extra money, was to go out and cut a few corners...We were all so very close. I mean, there were never any outsiders around. Absolutely never. And being together all the time made everything seem all the more normal."

"We always did everything together and we always were in the same crowd. Anniversaries, christenings. We only went to each other's houses. The women played cards, and when the kids were born, Mickey and Jimmy were always the first at the hospital. And when we went to the Islands or Vegas to vacation, we always went together. No outsiders, ever. It got to be normal. It got to where I was even proud that I had the kind of husband who was willing to go out and risk his neck just to get us the little extras."

"But still I couldn't hurt him. How could I hurt him? I couldn't even bring myself to leave him. The truth was that no matter how bad I felt I was still very attracted to him. Why should I give him to someone else? Why should she win?"

"Three Decades of Life in the Mafia."

""As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster."—Henry Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y. 1955."

"Murderers come with smiles."

"Shooting people was 'No big deal'."

"In a world that's powered by violence, on the streets where the violent have power, a new generation carries on an old tradition."

"Robert De Niro - Jimmy Conway"

"Ray Liotta - Henry Hill"

"Joe Pesci - Tommy DeVito"

"Lorraine Bracco - Karen Hill"

"Paul Sorvino - Paul Cicero"

"Chuck Low - Morris 'Morrie' Kessler"

"Christopher Serrone - Young Henry Hill"

"Frank Sivero - Frankie Carbone"

"Tony Darrow - Sonny Bunz"

"Frank Vincent - Billy Batts"

"Frank Adonis - Anthony Stabile"

"Catherine Scorsese - Mrs. DeVito, Tommy's Mother"

"Gina Mastrogiacomo - Janice Rossi"

"Suzanne Shepherd - Karen's Mother"

"Debi Mazar - Sandy"

"Kevin Corrigan - Michael Hill"

"Charles Scorsese - Vinnie"

"Michael Imperioli - Spider"

"Tony Sirico - Tony Stacks"

"Samuel L. Jackson - Stacks Edwards"

"Vincent Pastore - Man with Coat Rack"