"[as Alyssa] Ladies and gentlemen, normally, I'd be tickled to play a selection from... [briefly eyes the sheet music cover: "Frederic Chopin- Eight Pieces for the Piano"] ... Chopin, but in honor of my new stepmother, whom I absolutely adore, I've decided to play a little something of my own."

"[as Alyssa, after eating escargot] All this money, and these people eat slugs?!"

"Orlando Brown - Cadet Kevin "Tiger" Dunn"

"Michael Ironside - Lt. Col. Stone"

"Steven Martini - Cadet Alex J. Stone"

"Karyn Parsons - Emily Walburn"

"Damon Wayans - Major Benson Winifred Payne"

"He's looking for a few good men...or at least a few guys old enough to shave."

"Welcome to the House of Payne."

"Charles S. Dutton - Ozzie Walls"

"Rae'Ven Larrymore Kelly - Tonya Hailey"

"Anthony Heald - Dr. Wilbert Rodeheaver"

"Chris Cooper - Dwayne Looney"

"Nicky Katt - Billy Ray Cobb"

"Doug Hutchison - James Louis "Pete" Willard"

"John Diehl - Tim Nunley"

"Donald Sutherland - Lucien Wilbanks"

"Kiefer Sutherland - Freddie Lee Cobb"

"Patrick McGoohan - Judge Omar Noose"

"Ashley Judd - Carla Brigance"

"Oliver Platt - Harry Rex Vonner"

"Brenda Fricker - Ethel Twitty"

"Kevin Spacey - Rufus Buckley"

"Samuel L. Jackson - Carl Lee Hailey"

"Sandra Bullock - Ellen Roark"

"Matthew McConaughey - Jake Brigance"

"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?"

"Anji Xtravaganza — Herself"

"Dorian Corey — Herself"

"Having a ball...wish you were here"

"Freddie Pendavis: To describe, explain mopping... Mopping you... go into a store... and... just look... for, look for whatever you want to see, look for whatever... Mopping's stealing."

"Octavia St. Laurent: I'm not looking for anything. I think all men are dogs. I honestly do. You know, every man starts barking sooner or later."

"One who can hang out with the roughest and the toughest."

"One who can take her baby brother to school."

"You know, the girl you see on the street corner talking about, "Yo man, I saw one of them thangs walking down the street.""

"Sweetheart, with the cigarette. You're giving me a banji effect. This is banji."

"Some of them say that we're sick, we're crazy. And some of them think that we are the most gorgeous, special things on Earth."

"And um, he's taking me out for dinner later this evening, or for cocktails after midnight. I know he'll give me some money just for me to maybe buy some shoes and a nice dress, so that the next time he sees me, he'll see me looking more and more beautiful, the way he wants to see me. But I don't have to go to bed with him, or anything like that. At times they do expect sexual favors, but that is between myself and them, so I don't want to talk about that any further. At most times, 99 percent of the time they don't. 95 percent of the time they don't. I feel like, if you're married? A woman, in the suburbs, a regular woman, if you want your husband to buy a washer and dryer set, I'm sure she'd have to go to bed with him, to give him something he wants, to get what she wants. So, in the long run, it all ends up the same way."

"I don't feel like there's anything mannish about me, except maybe what I might have between me down there, which is my little personal thing, so..."

"Now you wanna talk about reading? Let's talk about reading. What is wrong with you, Pedro, are you going through it? You're going through some kind of psychological change in your life? You went back to being a man? Touch this skin, darling, touch this skin honey, touch all of this skin! Okay? You just can't take it! You're just an overgrown orangutan!"

"When they're undetectable and they can walk out of that ballroom into the sunlight and onto the subway and get home, and still have all their clothes and no blood running off their bodies- those are the femme realness queens... and usually its a category for young queens."

"In real life you can't get a job as an executive unless you have the educational background and the opportunity. Now, the fact that you are not an executive is merely because of the social standing of life. Black people have a hard time getting anywhere and those that do are usually straight. In a ballroom you can be anything you want. You're not really an executive but you're looking like an executive. You're showing the straight world that I can be an executive if I had the opportunity because can look like one, and that is like a fulfillment."

"Shade is I don't tell you you're ugly but I don't have to tell you because you know you're ugly ... and that's shade."

"You get in a smart crack, and everyone laughs and kikis because you've found a flaw and exaggerated it, then you've got a good read going."

"Shade comes from reading. Reading came first."

"I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you've made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you've left a mark. You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot a arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you."