Mr. Vertigo Quotes
"I was twelve years old the first time I walked on water."
"You’re no better than an animal, a piece of human nothingness."
"Ain’t nobody can fly, mister. That’s what birds do, and I sure as hell ain’t no bird."
"If I haven’t taught you to fly by your thirteenth birthday, you can chop off my head with an axe."
"You get too high in the air, you could break your neck when you come down."
"Because, my wretched little thug, I barely have two dimes to rub together."
"I might have been an animal, but even the lowest animal has feelings."
"I know who I am. There ain’t nobody can steal that from me."
"If I fail to deliver on my promise, my fate will be in your hands."
"You’re telling me you’re still serious about that plan of yours?"
"I’m not putting you down there for fun and frolic. You’ll have a breath-hole, of course, a long tube to keep in your mouth for purposes of respiration, but otherwise it’s going to be fairly dank and uncomfortable."
"I’ll make a bargain with you. If you let me hold on to it a little longer, I’ll think of it as yours. That’s a promise. It’s got your name on it, and once I get you off the ground, you can have it back."
"He was a frail, scrawny fellow with bulging eyes and those enormous lips."
"If you listen to what the master tells you, it’s coming sooner than you think."
"It can’t hold a candle to Mother Sioux’s cooking," he said, "but it’s a damn sight better than mush, eh boys? When the chips are down, just remember who to count on."
"It won’t be long now. The master’s going to fix you up, and before you know it you’ll be downstairs at the ivories again, twiddling out one of your goofy rags."
"I ain’t got but nine and a half fingers myself, and it don’t bother me hardly at all. Once you lose yours, we’ll be just like twins."
"Christmas was approaching, the time when I was supposed to be off the ground, and I was still as subject to the laws of gravity as I’d ever been."
"I can’t say how long I hovered like that, but at a certain moment, I eased back to the ground."
"If you keep at it, there might be a surprise or two for me when I come back."
"The universe had gone up in smoke, and I was left to dwell among the ashes, alone forever among the smoldering ruins of betrayal."
"Now that I’d planted the idea in my head, I saw it as a golden opportunity."
"It was one thing to perform my stunts in private, but how could I be sure I wouldn’t fall on my face when I walked out in front of them?"
"For the next hour, my mind was a free-for-all of desperate thoughts."
"It was as if the sky had suddenly opened itself up to man, and we were the first pioneers, the Columbus and Magellan of human flight."
"The act’s on the level. What you see is what there is."
"We’ve got to put some meat on your bones, get you back to full strength."
"They’ll die a thousand deaths, Walt. You’ll prance and spin before them, and one by one they’ll follow you up the stairs of heaven."
"By the time it’s over, they’ll be sitting in the presence of God."
"I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em, fatso. You want another name, then start shedding a few pounds."
"It’s a hell of a retirement plan, let me tell you, and when you throw in the fact that them bills is unmarked, I can spend them all the way to Mexico and the feds won’t be none the wiser."
"Nature was calling, and every night I ran to it as breathlessly and hungrily as Adam himself."
"How to figure such a business? I’d been thrown into hell. I’d been bound and gagged and given up for dead, and one month later I was everybody’s darling."
"America was at my feet, and with a man like Master Yehudi pulling the strings, the odds were it would stay there for a long time to come."
"We’re going to act like gentlemen, and not only are we not going to hold it against her, we’re going to send her the prettiest wedding present any bride ever saw."
"I wasn’t going to stroll into any movie theaters on my own anymore, and as long as he was with me wherever I went, what could possibly happen?"
"Everything had to be squeezed into a smaller space, but once we began to explore the ins and outs of it, we saw that smaller didn’t necessarily mean worse."
"I’m not talking about the bullet. I’m talking about the cancer in my belly."
"My thoughts went back to the stomach-clutching scene in the New Haven hotel."
"By the time we left Texas and crossed into New Mexico, he seemed to perk up considerably."
"I’d be sharing the bill with other acts, and the program had to be boiled down to twenty minutes."
"The hardest trick was the ladder jump, and I must have spent as much time on that one as all the others put together."
"I remember all those stops, all those theaters and hotels, all the performances I gave, everything about everything."
"The idea was to work our way east from San Francisco to New York, playing the ten or twelve biggest cities for special command performances."
"If the world hit me, I had to hit back."
"I wanted him to be dead, and even as I looked into his face, searching it for the smallest sign of humanity or goodness, I thrilled at the idea of killing him."
"It’s good for you. Makes for strong bones and a sunny disposition."
"Then nothing. You’ll be doing the world a great service, Slim, and God will reward you."
"You don’t drink it, a bullet goes into your head. You drink it, and maybe you’ve got a chance."
"The name’s Bingo Walsh. You ever hear of me?"
"I’ve been running pretty hard since you last saw me."
"Once I proved my loyalty to him, he didn’t hold me back."
"I was the guy who put them there. It was dreary work, but I stuck with it for eighteen months."
"I just wanted to be left in peace, to scrape along as best I could and go where the world took me."
"I saw myself as one of them, I stood for what they stood for, and I never breathed a word to anyone about my past."
"I have to go back to explain it, all the way back to my tykehood in Saint Louis."
"As long as the Cards were winning, something was right with the world, and it wasn’t possible to fall into total despair."
"Maybe it’s time, Diz. Maybe it’s time to pack it in and head home to the farm."
"Considering what I was about to leave behind me, I suppose I was lucky."
"Welcome to the real world, pal. I gave my suits to the busboys, I kissed my girlfriends good-bye, and then climbed aboard the milk train and headed for boot camp."