"Diamond Louie: Down Western Avenue, we was going sixty-five miles an hour...We run smack into a police patrol. you know what I mean? We busted it in half!...Can you imagine bumping into a load of cops? They come rolling out like oranges!...When I come to, I was running down Thirty-fourth Street...The driver got knocked cold...I don't think she's [Bruce's mother] squawking much, you know what I mean?...Say listen, me with a gun on the hip and a kidnapped old lady on my hands, I'm gonna stick around askin' questions from a lot of cops?"

"Mayor: A guy who's done nothing for the last forty years but play pinochle gets elected Governor and right away, he thinks he's a Tarzan."

"Mayor: Do you realize there are two hundred thousand votes at stake? And if Earl Williams don't hang, we're gonna lose 'em?"

"Now you want me to talk...Oh ain't that funny. You wouldn't listen to me before. Not even for a minute. And now you want me to talk...What do ya want to know for? So you can write some more lies, so you can sell some more papers. I'll give you a wonderful story - only this time it'll be true!"

"[to a group of newspapermen] I came to tell ya what I think of ya, all of ya...You crumbs have been makin' a fool out of me long enough. I never said I loved Earl Williams and was willing to marry him on the gallows. You made that up, and about my being a soul-mate and having a love-nest with him...I met Mr. Williams just once in my life when he was wandering around in the rain without his hat and coat on like a sick dog the day before the shooting. I went up to him like any human being would and I asked him what was the matter. And - and he told me about being fired after being on the same job for fourteen years. And I brought him up to my room because it was warm there...Aw listen to me, please. I tell ya, he just sat there talking to me all night. He never once laid a hand on me. And - and in the morning, he went away. And I never saw him again till that day of the trial. Sure I was his witness!...That's why you're persecuting me, because Earl Williams treated me decent and not like an animal, and I said so!...It's a wonder a bolt of lightning don't come down and strike you all dead! A poor little fella that never meant nobody no harm. Sitting there this minute with the Angel of Death beside him, and you cracking jokes!"

"[To Hildy] I don't know what they're gonna think up there in Albany. They had to send the money to the police station...Where's mother? She said she was coming up here...Where'd she go?...Hildy! Tell me where my mother was going?...Did she get the money from you?...I'll take that money, Hildy...I've decided I can handle things around here and I'll take that certified check too...This is my wallet. Say, there's something funny going on. [To Walter] Hey, what are you doing?...[To Hildy] Hildy, I'm taking the nine o'clock train...Hildy, I just want you to answer me one question - you don't want to come with me...answer me, Hildy, you don't, do you?...Hildy, tell me, please tell me the truth. If you ever loved me, Hildy -? [To Walter] You're doing all this to her, I know that. She wanted to get away from you and everything you stand for, but you were too smart. You caught her and changed her mind...[To Hildy] Come on, Hildy, you're coming with me right now...I see, I'll keep. I'm like something in the icebox, aren't I?...You just don't love me...The point is that you never intended to be decent and live like a human being...I see what you are now. You're just like him and all the rest...I understand all right, I understand...Oh Hildy, I don't think you ever loved me at all..."

"[on the phone to Hildy] I was sitting right in the taxi where you left me and the young lady seemed to have a dizzy spell and I just...Yes, she's a blonde. Yes, very blonde."

"[on the phone] Well Butch, where are you?...Well, what are you doing there? Haven't you even started?...Listen, it's a matter of life and death!...Well, you can't stop for a dame now! I don't care if you've been after her for six years. Butch - our whole lives are at stake! Are you going to let a woman come between us after all we've been through?...Butch, I'd put my arm in fire for you, up to here. Now you can't double-cross me...Put her on, I'll talk to her. Oh, good evening madam. Now listen, you ten-cent glamour girl. You can't keep Butch away from his duty!"

"No, no, never mind the Chinese earthquake for heaven's sake...Look, I don't care if there's a million dead...No, no, junk the Polish Corridor...Take all those Miss America pictures off Page Six...Take Hitler and stick him on the funny page...No, no, leave the rooster story alone - that's human interest."

"[to Bruce] You're getting a great little girl for yourself...You're getting something else too, Bruce, you're getting a great newspaperman ... One of the best I ever knew. Sorry to see her go. Darn sorry, Hildy."

"I wish you hadn't done that, Hildy...Divorce me. Makes a fellow lose all faith in himself...Almost gives him a feeling he wasn't wanted."

"Tell him if he'll reprieve Earl Williams, we'll support him for senator. Tell him the Morning Post will be behind him hook, line, and sinker."

"[to Walter] How you have messed up my life. What am I going to do?...I could be on that train right now. What a sap I am falling for your line: "They're gonna name streets after me." Johnson Street!"

"All right, now here's your story. The jailbreak of your dreams. It seems that expert Dr. Egelhoffer, the profound thinker from New York, was giving Williams a final sanity test in the Sheriff's office - you know, sticking a lot of pins in him so that he could get his reflexes. Well, he decided to re-enact the crime exactly as it had taken place, in order to study Williams' powers of co-ordination...Of course, he had to have a gun to re-enact the crime with. And who do you suppose supplied it? Peter B. Hartwell, "B" for brains...Well, the Sheriff gave his gun to the Professor and the Professor gave it to Earl, and Earl shot the Professor right in the classified ads...No, ads. Ain't it perfect? If the Sheriff had unrolled a red carpet and loaned Williams an umbrella, it couldn't have been more ideal...Egelhoffer wasn't badly hurt. They took him to the County Hospital..."

"[on the phone to Walter] Now get this, you double-crossing chimpanzee! There ain't gonna be any interview and there ain't gonna be any story. And that certified check of yours is leaving with me in twenty minutes. I wouldn't cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up. And if I ever lay my two eyes on you again, I'm gonna walk right up to you and hammer on that monkey skull of yours 'til it rings like a Chinese gong! [she tears up her story] Do you hear that? That's the story I just wrote. Yes, yes, I know we had a bargain. I just said I'd write it. I didn't say I wouldn't tear it up. It's all in little pieces now, Walter, and I hope to do the same for you some day. [to newsroom] And that my friends, is my farewell to the newspaper game. I'm gonna be a woman, not a news-getting machine. I'm gonna have babies and take care of them. Give 'em cod liver oil and watch their teeth grow."

"[in her story] And so, into this little tortured mind came the idea that that gun had been produced for use. And use it he did. But the state has a 'production-for-use' plan too. It has a gallows. And at seven a.m. unless a miracle occurs, that gallows will be used to separate the soul of Earl Williams from his body. And out of Mollie Malloy's life will go the one kindly soul she ever knew."

"I'm going into business for myself...I'm getting married tomorrow...It's gonna be all right. I'm gonna settle down. I'm through with the newspaper business."

"Tell me. Is the Lord of the Universe in?"

"No need to panic. I'll just lash together a few raw facts, a little bit of old Negro wisdom, and this nightmare is over."

"Bruno Kirby — Marty Lewis"

"Peter Boyle — Carl Lazlo, Esq."

"Bill Murray — Dr. Hunter S. Thompson"

"Based on the twisted legend of Hunter S. Thompson"

"I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone... but they've always worked for me."

"As your ex-attorney, I advise you not to worry."

"As your attorney, I advise you to leave this room at once."

"Well I guess if I had to swear one way or another, I'd say Lazlo wasn't insane. He just had very strange rhythms. But he stomped on the terra. Lord Buckley said that. It's hard to say he got what he deserved, because he never really got anything, at least not in this story. And right now, this story is all we have ... It's sad. But what's really sad is it never got weird enough for me. I moved to the country when the boat got too crowded. Then I learned that President Nixon had been eaten by white cannibals on an island near Tijuana for no good reason at all. Golly, you hear a lot of savage and unnatural things about people these days. Lazlo and Nixon are both gone now, but I don't think I'm going to believe that 'til I can gnaw on their skulls with my very own teeth. Fuck those people, huh? If they're out there, I'm going to find them, and I'm going to gnaw on their skulls. Because it still hasn't gotten weird enough for me."

"Super Sunday. Dawn. My recollections of the last twelve hours are very dim. All that I know for certain is that shortly after I checked in, two third-world drug abusers disguised as hotel employees forced their way into my room; ransacked it, drank all my liquor, did all my drugs, stole my dinner. If the security precautions aren't beefed up at this hotel; I'm looking for safer accommodations. It's a sad state of affairs when this reporter has to go heavily armed to breakfast."

"He became a man the day of the greatest game he ever played. Everything he ever knew about common decency and morality he learned that day in December from Alan "The Horse" Ameche; and today in the Superbowl he would earn his wings. The crowd had assembled; a crowd of America's elite. Toyata salesmen from all around the country—orientals and even those suspected of being orientals—stacked on the thirty yard line watching him sweat and wipe caked blood from his face. The Gallow brothers—Ernest and Julio—party guys who had skinned a few Mexicans and forced them to carry them on their shoulders down to the pre-game tailgate parties at the colosseum. The Pepsi and Coca Cola bottlers of America—Coke adds life; It's the real thing—bombarded by missiles; flying flaming matchbook covers. The waterheads from General Motors up in the top seats where they belong; getting the worst of the pollution. All sorts of weird motherfuckers were at the game."

"You couldn't invent someone like Carl Lazlo. He was a ... he was one of a kind. He was a mutant. A real heavyweight water buffalo type ... who could chew his way through a concrete wall and spit out the other side covered with lime and chalk and look good in doing it."

"I hate to advocate alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone but they've always worked for me."

"[Reacting to a police officer's testimony in court] You were looking for a bomb in a pack of cigarettes?"

"I was a working journalist, a hired geek of sorts, and Lazlo was great copy and sometimes a great lawyer. It was a fast, strange time and we worked in a fast, strange ways."

"There, chew on that gibberish for awhile, you heartless scum!"

"[Urging his dog to attack a Nixon mannequin] Bronco ... Nixon."

""Mike"? Try "Mr. Wallace." We work in the same corporation, doesn't mean we work in the same profession. What are you gonna do now? You gonna finesse me? Lawyer me some more? I've been in this profession fifty fucking years. You and the people you work for are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network!"

"Stephen Tobolowsky - Eric Kluster"

"Christopher Plummer - Mike Wallace"

"Philip Baker Hall - Don Hewitt"

"Russell Crowe - Jeffrey Wigand"

"Al Pacino - Lowell Bergman"

"Two men driven to tell the truth... whatever the cost."

"Warning: Exposing the Truth May Be Hazardous"

"Fame has a fifteen minute half-life. Infamy lasts a little longer."

"Do me a favor, will you - spare me, for God's sake, get in the real world, what do you think? I'm going to resign in protest? To force it on the air? The answer's "no." I don't plan to spend the end of my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio. That decision I've already made."

"Will you tell him that when I conduct an interview, I sit anywhere I damn please!"