Collateral quotes

View Quote Vincent: Okay, look, here's the deal. Man, you were gonna drive me around tonight, never be the wiser, but El Gordo got in front of a window, did his high dive, we're into Plan B. Still breathing? Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.
Max: I Ching? What are you talking about, man? You threw a man out of a window.
Vincent: I didn't throw him. He fell.
Max: Well what did he do to you?
Vincent: What?
Max: What did he do to you?
Vincent: Nothing. I only met him tonight.
Max: You just met him once and you killed him like that?
Vincent: What? I should only kill people after I get to know them?

View Quote [Mocking Max] "Someday, someday my dream will come?" One night you'll wake up and you'll discover it never happened. It's all turned around on you, and it never will. Suddenly you are old. It didn't happen, and it never will because you were never going to do it anyway. You'll push it into memory, then zone out in your barcalounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don't you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln Town Car, and that girl... you can't even call that girl. What the **** are you still doing driving a cab?

View Quote Vincent: Max, six billion people on the planet, you're getting bent out of shape cause of one fat guy.
Max: Well, who was he?
Vincent: What do you care? Have you ever heard of Rwanda?
Max: Yes, I know Rwanda.
Vincent: Well, tens of thousands killed before sundown. Nobody's killed people that fast since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Did you bat an eye, Max?
Max: What?
Vincent: Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Whales, Greenpeace, or something? No. I off one fat Angelino and you throw a hissy fit.
Max: Man, I don't know any Rwandans.
Vincent: You don't know the guy in the trunk, either.

View Quote Lenny: Still there? I'm talking to you. Max. Max!
Vincent: [over the radio] He's not paying you a damn thing.
Lenny: Who the hell is this?
Vincent: Albert Ricardo, Assistant U.S. Attorney, a passenger in this cab, and I'm reporting you to the D.M.V.
Lenny: Let's not, oh, let's not get excited.
Vincent: Not get excited? How am I supposed to not get excited? Listen, you try to extort a working man. You know goddamn well your collision policy and general liability umbrella will cover the damages. And what are you trying to pull, you sarcastic prick?
Lenny: Look, I was just trying to...
Vincent: Tell it to him. [to Max] Tell him he's an asshole. Go ahead.
Max: [to Lenny] You're an asshole.
Vincent: Tell him he pulls this shit again, you're gonna stick this yellow cab up his fat ass.
Max: [to Lenny] And, and next time you pull any shit, I'm gonna... I'm gonna have to stick this yellow cab up... up your fat ass.

View Quote Felix: Do you believe in Santa Claus?
Max: No.
Felix: Nor do I. Nor do I, but my children do. They are still small. But do you know who they like even better than Santa Claus? His helper, Pedro el Negro. Black Peter. There's an old Mexican tale that tells of how Santa Claus got so very busy looking out for the good children that he had to hire some help to look out for the bad children. So he hired Pedro. And Santa Claus gave him a list with all the names of all the bad children. And Pedro would come every night to check them out. And the people, the little kids that were misbehaving, that were not saying their prayers, Pedro would leave a little toy donkey on their window. A little burro. And he would come back, and if the children were still misbehaving, Pedro would take them away, and nobody would ever see them again. Now, if I am being Santa Claus, and you are Pedro, how do you think jolly Santa Claus would feel if one day Pedro came into his office and said, "I lost the list." How ****ing furious do you think he will get?

View Quote Max: What's with you?
Vincent: As in?
Max: As in if somebody had a gun to your head and said: "You gotta tell me what's going on with this person over here or I'm gonna kill you. What is driving him? What was he thinking?" You know, you couldn't do it, could you, because... They'd have to kill your ass because you don't know what anyone else is thinking. I think you're low, my brother. Way low. Like, what were you? One of those institutionalized raised guys? Anyone home? The standard parts that are supposed to be there in people, in you... aren't. ... And why haven't you killed me yet?
Vincent: Of all the cabbies in L.A. I get Max: Sigmund Freud meets Dr. Ruth.

View Quote Daniel: I mean, everybody and their momma knew you don't just come up and talk to Miles Davis. I mean, he may have looked like he was chilling, but he was absorbed. This one hip couple, one of them tried to shake his hand one day. And the guy says, "Hi, my name is..." Miles said, "Get the **** outta my face, you jive mother****er, and take your silly bitch with you."

View Quote Most people, ten years from now, same job, same place, same routine. Everything the same. Just keeping it safe over and over and over. Ten years from now. Man, you don't know where you'll be ten minutes from now . . .

View Quote Vincent: What's your name?
Max: Max.
Vincent: Max. I'm Vincent.
Max: First time in L.A.?
Vincent: No. Tell you the truth, whenever I'm here I can't wait to leave. It's too sprawled out, disconnected. You know? That's me. You like it?
Max: It's my home.
Vincent: 17 million people. This is got to be the fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each other. I read about this guy who gets on the MTA here, dies.
Max: Oh.
Vincent: Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.

View Quote Felix: Now you're here. Why?
Max: I lost my stuff. The list.
Felix: I want you to listen to me real well. Special groups put together the list of dedos.
Max: Dedos?
Felix: Fingers, informants. Signal interceptions with voice-recognition software, surveillance. A very expensive counter-intelligence worked up that list. An important list, wouldn't you say? And you lost it?
Max: Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry.
Felix: Sorry? 'Sorry' does not put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

View Quote Max: How do you like being a lawyer?
Annie: What are you, psychic?
Max: Little bit. There's the dark pin-stripe suit, elegant, not too flashy, that rules out advertising, plus a top-drawer briefcase that you live out of. And the purse. A Bottega. Anyway, a man gets in my cab with a sword, I figure he's a sushi chef. You: Clarence Darrow.

View Quote Max: Hey. He, he, he fell on the cab. He fell, he fell from up there on the mother****ing cab. Shit. I think he's dead.
Vincent: Good guess.
Max: You killed him?
Vincent: No, I shot him. Bullets and the fall killed him.

View Quote Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, and a speck on one in a blink. That's us, lost in space. The cop, you, me... Who notices?

View Quote Daniel: Just when I thought you were a cool guy.
Vincent: I am a cool guy, with a job I contracted to do.

View Quote Vincent: They project onto you their flaws, what they don't like about themselves. I had a father like that.
Max: Mothers are worse.
Vincent: Wouldn't know. My mother died before I remember her.
Max: What about your father?
Vincent: Hated everything I did. Got drunk, beat me up. In and out of foster homes, that kinda thing.
Max: And then?
Vincent: I killed him. I was twelve.
[Pauses, then laughs]
Vincent: I'm kidding. He died of liver disease.
Max: Well, I'm sorry.
Vincent: No, you're not.