"I had a great summation all worked out, full of some sharp lawyering, but I'm not going to read it. I'm here to apologize. I am young, and I am inexperienced. But you cannot hold Carl Lee Hailey responsible for my shortcomings. Do you see, in all this legal maneuvering, something has gotten lost. That something is the truth. Now, it is incumbent upon us lawyers not to just talk about the truth but to actually seek it, to find it, to live it. My teacher taught me that. Let's take Dr. Bass, for example. I would have never knowingly put a convicted felon on the stand. I hope you can believe that. But what is the truth? That, that he's a disgraced liar? What if I told you that the woman he was accused of raping was 17, he was 23, that she later became his wife, bore his child and is still married to the man today? Does that make his testimony more or less true? What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds, or is it our hearts? I set out to prove a black man could receive a fair trial in the South, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. That's not the truth 'cause the eyes of the law are human eyes, yours and mine, and until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to be even-handed. It will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own prejudices. So until that day, we have a duty under God to seek the truth - not with our eyes, and not with our minds where fear and hate turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts - but we don't know better. [pause] I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they've killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to bear children, to have life beyond her own, they decided to use her for target practice. They start throwin' full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk, she's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. [He holds back his tears as his voice breaks] Now imagine she's white."

"What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts?"

"William Baldwin - Brian McCaffrey"

"Mark Wheeler - Pengelly"

"Jack McGee - Schmidt"

"Kevin Casey as Nightingale"

"Juan Ramirez - Ray Santos"

"Cedric Young - Grindle"

"Anthony Mockus, Sr. - Chief John Fitzgerald"

"J. T. Walsh - Alderman Martin Swayzak"

"Jason Gedrick - Tim Krizminski"

"Donald Sutherland - Ronald Bartel"

"Rebecca De Mornay - Helen McCaffrey"

"Jennifer Jason Leigh - Jennifer Vaitkus"

"Scott Glenn - John "Axe" Adcox"

"Robert De Niro - Inspector Donald "Shadow" Rimgale"

"Kurt Russell - Lt. Stephen "Bull" McCaffrey/Capt. Dennis McCaffrey"

"In that instant it can create a hero... or cover a secret."

"One breath of oxygen and it explodes in a deadly rage."

"Silently behind a door, it waits."

"Ronald Bartel: The funny thing about firemen is... Night and day they are always firemen."

"Ricco, Pathologist: [to Brian about picking up the burned body] Jesus Christ! He's not going to sell you insurance, pick him up!"

"[Rimgale and Brian crash Alderman Swayzak's press conference] These detectives would like to question you on how come you paid Donald Cosgrove, Jeffrey Holcomb and Alan Seagrave to create a phony manpower study! Ask him who made money off firemen dying!"

"Jesus, Stevie, you never know when to quit, do you? Do you ever wonder why you're stuck a fucking lieutenant for life?"

"I'm not gonna quit, Stephen. You hear me?"

"Look at him. That's my brother, Goddamn it."

"You're doin it wrong."

"The only problem is that in this job is there's just no place to hide. It's not like having a bad day selling log cabins. You have a bad day here and somebody dies... and that's just not fucking good enough."

"Well, I thinks its union bylaw that if you get your picture in the paper, even if it's bullshit, that you gotta buy the whole company a drink."

"I told you to stay right be-fucking-side me, Brian!"

"You go, we go."

"One case of scotch, Brian? Man, you're getting cheap in your old age!"

"How do you do it, man? How do you manage to keep coming up with new and amazing ways to fuck up? I mean, that Scotch bullshit? Am I really supposed to believe you came crawlin' home because you felt heartstrings moan for the family biz? You were bankrupt, man! The scary thing is, you probably coulda got away with it for awhile."

"Power is gained by joining people together, not by making them go against you."

"Saurabh Dubey - Pooja's Father"