The Hustler quotes

View Quote Eddie: How should I play that one, Bert? Play it safe? That's the way you always told me to play it, safe. Play the percentage. Well here we go, fast and loose. One ball, corner pocket. Yeah, percentage players die broke too, don't they, Bert? How can I lose? Twelve ball. How can I lose? Because you were right. It's not enough that ya just have talent. You gotta have character, too. Four ball. Yeah, I sure got character now. I picked it up in a hotel room in Louisville.
Minnesota Fats: Shoot pool, Fast Eddie.
Eddie: I'm shootin' pool, Fats. When I miss, you can shoot. Five ball. Fourteen ball. Twelve ball...

View Quote Gordon: Where do you think you're going? Eddie? You owe me money!
Eddie: Well, just how do ya figure that, Bert? Whaddya figure I owe ya?
Gordon: Half.
Eddie: In Louisville, it was seventy-five percent.
Gordon: Well, here it's half.
Eddie: What if I don't pay ya, Bert?
Gordon: [laughs] You don't pay me? You're gonna get your thumbs broken again. And your fingers. If I want 'em to, they're gonna break your right arm in three or four places.
Minnesota Fats: You better pay him, Eddie.
Eddie: So you figure you're still my manager, huh?
Gordon: I'm a businessman, kid.
Eddie: Well, you gotta lot of games lined up for me?
Gordon: Boy, we're gonna make a lotta money together from now on.
Eddie: Fifty percent?
Gordon: Nah, it don't have to be fifty. It'll be thirty or twenty-five.
Eddie: We really stuck the knife in her, didn't we, Bert?
Gordon: Ahh!
Eddie: Boy, we really gave it to her good.
Gordon: If it didn't happen in Louisville, it'd happen someplace else. If it didn't happen now, it'd happen six months from now. That's the kind of a dame she was.
Eddie: Then we twisted it, didn't we, Bert? Of course, maybe that doesn't stick in your throat, 'cause you spit it out just the way you spit out everything else. But it sticks in mine. I loved her, Bert. I traded her in on a pool game. But that wouldn't mean anything to you because who did you ever care about. 'Just win,' 'Win!' you said, 'win, that's the important thing.' You don't know what winning is, Bert. You're a loser. 'Cause you're dead inside and ya can't live unless you make everything dead around ya! Too high, Bert - the price is too high. If I take it, she never lived. She never died. And we both know that's not true, Bert, don't we, huh? She lived, she died. Boy, you better, you tell your boys they better kill me, Bert. They better go all the way with me, but if they just bust me up, I'll put all those pieces back together again, then so help me, so help me God, Bert, I'm gonna come back here and I'm gonna kill you. [Bert's thugs move toward Eddie]
Gordon: [Gordon gestures to his goons to back off.] All right. All right. Only, uh, don't ever walk into a big-time pool hall again.

View Quote Eddie: What, no bar?
Cashier: No bar, no pinball machines, no bowling alleys, just pool... nothing else. This is Ames mister.

View Quote Eddie: [After Gordon has offered to front him the money, for a 75-25 split of the winnings] That's a pretty big slice. Who do you think you are, General Motors?
Gordon: How much you think you're worth these days? I'm puttin' up the money, I'm puttin' up the time. For that, I get seventy-five percent return on my money - if you win.
Eddie: Do you think I can lose?
Gordon: I never saw you do anything else.
Eddie: You saw me beat Minnesota Fats for eighteen thousand dollars.
Gordon: Look, you want to hustle pool, don't ya? This game isn't like football. Nobody pays you for yardage. When you hustle, you keep score real simple. At the end of the game, you count up your money. That's how you find out who's best. It's the only way.
Eddie: Why back me, then, huh? Why don't you go back yourself? Go find yourself a big fat poker game and get rich. You know all the angles.
Gordon: I'm already rich. But I like action. That's one thing I think you're good for - is action. Besides, like I say, you got talent.
Eddie: Yeah, you already told me that. You cut that slice down to bite size, maybe we could talk.
Gordon: No, we don't talk. I don't make bad bets. Seventy-five, twenty-five, that's it.
Eddie: Kiss off!
Gordon: Hey wait! What are you gonna do about the money?
Eddie: There are places. I'll scuffle around.
Gordon: The word's out on you, Eddie. You walk in the wrong kind of place, they'll eat ya alive.
Eddie: And when did you adopt me?
Gordon: I don't know when it was.

View Quote Eddie: Please don't get off me now, Bert.
Gordon: I know when to quit and you don't. Win or lose, you don't know when to quit.
Eddie: [on his knees] What do ya want me to do, huh? What do ya want me to do? Just say it and you got it, but please don't get off me now.
Sarah: Don't beg him, Eddie.
Eddie: Go on back to the hotel.
Sarah: Please Eddie, don't beg him.
Eddie: Go on back to the hotel, take a cab. Go on back to the hotel.
Sarah: Doesn't all of this come through to you, Eddie? Doesn't any of this mean anything to you? That man, this place, the people. They wear masks, Eddie and underneath the masks they're perverted, twisted, crippled....
Eddie: Shut up!
Sarah: Don't wear a mask, Eddie. You don't have to. That's Turk, Eddie, the man who broke your thumbs. Well, he's not gonna break your thumbs. He'll break your heart, your guts, and for the same reason. He hates you because of what you are, cause of what you have and he hasn't.
Eddie: Would you get off my back, Sarah, once and for all, would you get out?! Would you get off my back?!
Gordon: Go ahead and play him, Eddie. Play him for a thousand dollars a game.

View Quote Charlie: [after they've played all night] The pool game is over.
Eddie: The pool game is over when Fats says it's over...I came after him and I'm gonna get him. I'm goin' with him all the way. The pool game is not over until Minnesota Fats says it's over. Is it over, Fats?
[Fats turns to Gordon for the answer.]
Eddie: [to Gordon] I'm gonna beat him, Mister. I beat him all night and I'm gonna beat him all day. I'm, I'm the best you ever seen, Fats. I'm the best there is. Now even if you beat me, I'm still the best.
Gordon: [to Fats] Stay with this kid. He's a loser.
Eddie: [to Charlie] What did he say?

View Quote Gordon: I don't think there's a pool player alive who shoots better pool than I saw you shoot the other night at Ames. You got talent.
Eddie: So I got talent? So what beat me?
Gordon: Character.
Eddie: Sure, sure.
Gordon: You're damn right I'm sure. Everybody's got talent, I got talent. You think you can play big-money straight pool or poker for forty straight hours on nothing but talent? You think they call Minnesota Fats the best in the country just cause he got talent? Nah, Minnesota Fats's got more character in one finger than you got in your whole skinny body.
Eddie: I got drunk.
Gordon: He drank as much whiskey as you do.
Eddie: Maybe he knows how to drink.
Gordon: You bet he knows how. You think that's a talent too, huh, knowin' how to drink whiskey? You think Minnesota Fats was born knowin' how to drink?
Eddie: OK, OK, what do I do now? Lie down on the floor and, uh, bow from the ankles? What do I do, go home?
Gordon: That's your problem.
Eddie: So I stay. I stay until I hustle up enough to play Fats again. And maybe by that time, I'll develop myself some character.
Gordon: [chuckling] Maybe by that time you'll die of old age. How much do you think you'll, uh, need?
Eddie: A thousand.
Gordon: Naw, three thousand at least. He'll start you off at five hundred a game, he'll beat the pants off ya. That's the way he plays when he comes up against a man who knows the way the game is. He'll beat you flat four or five times, maybe more, depending on how, uh, steady your nerves are. Then he might, just might be a little scared of ya, and that could change things, but I wouldn't count on it.
Eddie: How do you know, huh, when nobody knows that much?
Gordon: You see that big car parked out by the fireplug on your way in? Well, that's mine. I like that car. But I get a new one every year, because I make it my business to know what guys like you and Minnesota Fats are gonna do. I made enough off you the other night to pay for it twice over.

View Quote Eddie: Didn't leave you much.
Minnesota Fats: You left enough.

View Quote Charlie Burns: [to Sarah] This boy is the greatest pool hustler you ever saw, a real high-class con-man. He can charm anybody into anything. Did he ever tell you how well we've been doing on the road. We had everything. We ate good, we slept late, we had money to burn. Whiskey, dames, excuse me. I'll tell you what, take her along. I'll tell you what else, you don't want to start right away, we won't start it right away. We'll get in the car and drive to Miami, get all this crud out of your system. Have a few laughs, lie in the sun for a couple of weeks.
Eddie: With what?
Charlie: Don't worry about it. I'll raise the money.
Eddie: Oh yeah, where?
Charlie: What's the difference where? I'll raise it.

View Quote Minnesota Fats: I quit, Eddie. I can't beat you...[To Gordon] You've got yourself a pool player.

View Quote Sarah: Leave now.
Eddie: Grow up.
Sarah: Why should I?
Eddie: Sarah, I'm going to Kentucky to play pool with a guy by the name of Findlay. Now I need the action and I need the money. I told ya I'd be back.
Sarah: If you were going to come back, you wouldn't have taken me out tonight, you wouldn't have bought this dress. You're hustling me, Eddie. You've never stopped hustling me.
Eddie: No, I never hustled you, even when I thought I was, and you know it.
Sarah: What do you want me to do, just sit here and wait, your faithful looking Sarah. Pull all the shades down and sit. When you feel like coming back, you'll come back and you'll love me, and then you'll go away again. Is that your idea of love?
Eddie: I got no idea of love. Neither of you, I mean, neither one of us would know what it was if we saw it comin' down the street.
Sarah: I'd know it, Eddie. I'd know it. For God's sakes, what are you trying to do to me? I love you.
Eddie: Well, what's your idea of love - chains?
Sarah: I made you up, didn't I, Eddie? You weren't real. I made you up, like everything else. There was no car crash, Eddie. When I was five, I had polio. I was never an actress. The 'rich old man' is my father. He walked out on us when I was seven. He sends me a check every month. That's how he buys his way out of my life. The men I've known - after they've left, I'd say they weren't real. I made them up. But you, Eddie, I wanted you to be real. I'm so scared. I'm scared.

View Quote Big John: [to Charlie Burns] Take your boy and go home. Fats don't need your money. There's no way you can beat him. Nobody's beat him in fifteen years. He's the best in the country.

View Quote Two ships that pass in the night should always buy each other breakfast.

View Quote Eddie: I thought we came here to play pool.
Findlay: I don't play pool, Mr. Felson. I play billiards. My house, my game. You don't have to play if you don't want to.
Gordon: We won't.
Eddie: Come on Bert, let me play him.

View Quote Minnesota Fats: You shoot a good stick.
Eddie: They say Minnesota Fats is the best in the country out where I come from...They say that old Fats just shoots the eyes right off them balls.
Minnesota Fats: Big John? Do you think this boy is a hustler? [to Eddie] Do you like to gamble, Eddie? Gamble money on pool games?
Eddie: Fats, let's you and I shoot a game of straight pool.
Minnesota Fats: A hundred dollars.
Eddie: Well, you shoot big-time pool, Fats. I mean, that's what everybody says, 'You shoot big-time pool.' Let's make it two hundred dollars a game.
Minnesota Fats: Now I know why they call you 'Fast' Eddie. Eddie, you talk my kind of talk.