max-payne

"The real security guards had been run off, paid off, or bumped off. That left us. It wasn't a fantastically comforting thought."

"Here I was again, with all hell breaking loose around me, standing over another dead girl I had been trying to protect."

"I had been shot more times than I could remember, but this felt different. Maybe fate was sending me a message. Trying to tell me my luck was finally about to run out. Or maybe I'd just severed an artery and was just bleeding out like any number of fools who got shot playing with guns. Either way, I was failing fast."

"Rodrigo Branco: Strange. You pay a couple million dollars and you expect to-- to push a button to-- to be able to make all your problems go away. All I got was some useless junk and a bit of false confidence. I'm done, Max."

"Way I see it, there's two types of people: Those who spend their lives trying to build a future, and those who spend their lives trying to rebuild the past. For too long, I'd been stuck in-between, hidden in the dark. What was I really doing, walking in there with my bad haircut and ridiculous shirt? Was I there to make something right? Or was I just using a messed up situation to indulge myself, grasping at some desperate delusion of control? Maybe the two went hand-in-hand more than I cared to admit."

"That much security, it had to be Serrano's pad. Since I was in the neighborhood, I figured he wouldn't mind if I dropped in and thanked him personally for his "hospitality". It wasn't like he wasn't expecting me."

"A couple days later, it was back to work ferrying the boss's broad and his dipshit of a brother out for the night so they could recover from their brush with mortality. Then again, what did I expect? These were the kind of people who went to nightclubs in helicopters."

"Things were turning pretty ugly in this town. The boss's girl was gone, and part of me wished I was, too."

"[on shooting Tony] I don't know why I did it. Guess I never liked seeing girls get hit. But from that moment, I was dead in that town."

"Rodrigo Branco: Do you think a pile of shit feels popular because it's surrounded by flies?"

"I was a mess. Rodrigo Branco was dead. Fabiana was held hostage. I had no idea who was behind any of this. I felt like a fool. I was a sweaty, grey-haired mess. This place... Well, this place was gonna kill me, too. I could see that now. I decided that I was gonna die sober, not drunk. At least then, I would see who shot me."

"So I guess I was finally about to go and experience the other side of São Paulo firsthand -- the bit people try to ignore. The unpleasant memory they try to obliterate with cocktails and helicopters and parties and lines of blow, like rich fools the world over. I was off the sauce for the first time in years and knew I was due a hangover sent direct from Mother Nature."

"It looked like there was a bar up ahead. The irony was not lost on me. I figured sobriety was no use to me dead."

"I was trying to decide whether to crash this party or to turn back when my natural grace and finesse made the decision for me."

"So I guess I had become what they wanted me to be. A killer. Some rent-a-clown with a gun who puts holes in other bad guys. Well, that's what they had paid for so, in the end that's what they got. Say what you want about Americans, but we understand capitalism. You buy yourself a product, and you get what you pay for. And these chumps had paid for some angry gringo without the sensibilities to know right from wrong. Here I was, about to execute this poor bastard like some dime store angel of death. And I realized, they were correct; I wouldn't know right from wrong if one of them was helping the poor and the other was banging my sister."

"[after trying to play a piano in the penthouse] It wasn't the time and I was still a little rusty, but the tune was coming together... just as this 'new start' of mine was about to come to a shuddering halt."

"I knew this was gonna be a bad idea, but in the continued absence of any good ones, I decided to go with it."

"[about Passos] We were two failed cops failing miserably at being bodyguards. He approached everything with about as little preparation as I did. Maybe that's why we got along."

"I might've written the book on dumb ideas, but Passos sure wasn't afraid to pull from it."

"I had been sitting at the bar for about three hours or about five years depending on how you looked at things. I tried not to look at things. I tried not to think about when it was that my existence became less about the things that make up people's lives and more about the holes that losing those things leave behind. But I wasn't doing a very good job at it."

"Up and out. Scramble away from what's left of your life over dead bodies and a few loose roof tiles."

"Here I was, some hopped up gringo a long way from home, making trouble the only way I knew."

"I knew there was another way in upstairs for the helipad. The little luxury runaround that kept the rich looking down on the poor literally as well as metaphorically."

"So much for a lazy Sunday afternoon. My next trick would be a high-wire act with a fiery pit for a safety net. It was nice that no one was shooting at me for a change, but I'd take shot in the head over a slow roast on a spit any day of the goddamn week."

"It was time to take back control from whoever was out to get me. And if I didn't flush them out, at least my mid-life crisis would confuse them enough so they did something stupid. It was the only hope I had. I knew I wasn't thinking straight -- I'd been drinking and popping painkillers for years. I had a liver like a french goose and skin like red leather."

"Well... It wasn't perfect. In fact, it wasn't much good at all. But it was gonna have to do. At least I was... facing in the right direction."

"First day off the sauce and, somehow, I'd still ended up in the gutter."

"Well, they weren't gonna help me. And who could blame them? I was a dumb American in a place where dumb Americans were less popular than the clap."

"Wilson Da Silva: I'm a cop. I mean, I'll fight corruption. I'll stand up to the rich and dumb, but if I go up that hill right now? I'll be dead in three minutes or less. Maybe you, too, Max! You're in the jungle now!"

"It was Monday afternoon, and I'd already been thrown out of a party, gone to a strip club, and got into a bar fight. This latest mid-life crisis was certainly ticking all the boxes."

"This place was great. Really comfortable. I'm just gonna get settled in."

"Listen, if you still think I can do a job, what have I got to lose? Apart from the weight... Very funny, ha-ha. Yes, that is a fake laugh, you jerk."

"And what kinda town was this? One where I didn't speak the language and they didn't water down their drinks. So, for now, we seemed to get along just fine."

"The family we were protecting were local celebrities. Rich parasites with delusions of humanity. The kind of people who end up in glossy magazines or body bags depending on how their luck runs."

"Marcelo Branco: I've been working far too hard -- like a whore during Fleet Week, as my roommate used to say."

"I hadn't see it coming, but that wasn't surprising; it's hard to keep your eye on the ball through the bottom of a glass."

"A couple of more seconds, and I'd have given some poor street cleaner a crappy start to his day. Now? I had a ride to catch."

"There was a goddamn army of these goons. Clearly, somebody wanted these girls bad. Or maybe they assumed that Branco's security team consisted of more than a drunk American has-been and a Brazilian never-was who should've paid more attention in flying school."

"At least one of us had a gun now. That raised our chances of survival all the way from 'nil' to 'slim'."

"I didn't know what to think anymore; this town had more smoke and mirrors than a strip club locker room."

"I had a hole in my second favorite drinking arm, and the only way we were likely to get Fabiana back now was in "installments". Whoever our uninvited guests were, I was about done playing soldier."

"Looking back, it was strange how the cops never showed up. But things had a habit of only making sense to me looking back, long after I'd run out of time to fix them."

"When had I ever needed to invite trouble in? It always found me, no matter where I hid."

"Brewer: My boy, don't be afraid of the fires. You think they'll hurt ya. You think they'll char your skin and char your bones... But it'll make you clean in the long run! The joys of hygiene!"

"Gunfire over Hoboken. Felt strange to be at the center of it again. The target, that is. Like an old comedian hearing one last round of applause."

"Passos: Yeah, I can see why you don't wanna leave this place, Max. It's real charming."

"Seemed like breaching the perimiter had been no more difficult than strolling through the front gates. But hey, who needs a Trojan Horse when the alarm is down and your standing army is a dame, a dork, and a... drunk?"

"Poor girl was dead. Shot through the head by some hero fighting the rich, one lonely secretary at a time."

"Look at me. I'd been contracted to protect two people. One was being held in some hole, the other was sitting at his desk with a bullet in his head, and the company that had its logo on my paycheck was melting on top of my head."

"We were only married a short time. By now, she had been dead longer than I knew her. I still hadn't really forgiven myself for the Mona business, but I knew that was just grief. The insanity that comes with losing the life you had built. Michelle... I missed her with every part of my being. I hated the world for not killing me with her, and I hated myself for allowing this to happen to her and our little girl. But I knew I had to leave town."