Live By Night Quotes
"And it occurred to him that almost everything of note that had ever happened in his life—good or bad—had been set in motion the morning he first crossed paths with Emma Gould."
"Not one of the men looked Greek. Or harmless."
"Like she might ask to see something more impressive for an encore."
"The only other door besides the one they’d come through was chalk-marked with a T for toilet, which made sense, because people had to piss when they drank."
"He was certain she could see his face behind the handkerchief and the low hat."
""What’s your name?" "Emma Gould," she said. "What’s yours?" "Wanted.""
"She didn’t just stare at him, she stared through him."
""You don’t get many shots at the good ones. Not in our line."
""And what will the gentleman be having with his robbery this morning?""
""The beer’s not that bad," he said and raised his bucket. "I had some once in this place this one time? I swear to you it—""
""Butter doesn’t melt on your tongue, does it?" she said."
""I’m not shit," she whispered, her mouth half open to the night, the snow mingling with the tears streaming down her face."
""What you put out into the world will always come back for you.""
""Violence breeds violence. It’s an absolute.""
""No one’s good, no one’s bad. Everyone’s just trying to make their way.""
""And then when they did meet, keeping their hands off each other went from an unlikely proposition to an impossible one.""
""What if there is no After? And this"—she ground herself down on him—"is all we get?""
""We might run a straight house, but we’re not a fucking charity, are we, Joe?""
"The foundation of all lives is luck. Good or bad."
"Achievement? Depends on luck—to be born in the right place at the right time."
"I will not take the life of another without cause."
"I won’t commit homicide. Kill for you? Yes. But murder? Never."
"It’s worth a fortune, that piece of metal. But that’s all it is—a piece of metal. You buy your life with it."
"Life was luck. But life, he’d come to realize as he aged, was also memory."
"I will miss you. I will mourn you. But I am now newly born. And truly free."
"Everything in a man’s life is about profit. Profit, or succession."
"I don’t want to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance."
"There are no rules but the ones a man makes for himself."
"It’s not hilarious or anything. Just interesting, kind of."
"How about Coughlin Country? No, hold it, Coughlin Continent."
"Joe laughed and Dion roared and slapped the wheel."
"He’s a copper, so he’s an asshole. Beyond that, he’s okay."
"That this is how we live. But everything else? Well, that’s why we live."
"If you were to ask me in private how I feel about Volstead, you’d see me do a pretty fair imitation of a kettle come to boil."
"But just because I breathe corrupt air and rub elbows with corrupt people, never make the mistake of believing I am corruptible."
"I won’t insult you by asking the nature of your business, so you won’t have to insult me by lying."
"The beauty of Chief Irving Figgis’s daughter wasn’t something you wanted to despoil, it was something you wanted to beatify."
"Sometimes a change of scenery gives a man a new lease on life."
"This is what liquor tasted like when you had more than an hour to distill it, more than a week to ferment it."
"I’ve been in prison since March of ’27, Senor Suarez. I’ve had nothing to do but my homework."
"You didn’t die and go to a better place; this was the better place because you weren’t dead."
"Heaven wasn’t in the clouds; it was the air in your lungs."
"I’m sorry, he whispered to his father, it wasn’t supposed to be this."
"You can’t escape ’em down here. They’re everywhere."
"I got my brother killed, Joe. You know what living with that’s like?"
"Before I met her? I didn’t realize there was this bullet hole right in the center of me."
"It’s a shitty business, so we do shitty things."
"She lost everything for this man—her family, all her money and she never had much, most of her friends but me."
"No one, Joseph, is hunting this man, except for those he owes money."
"We all believe lies that bring us more comfort than the truth."
"Plans are just dreams until they're executed."
"You see the worst in the best of people, and the best in the worst of people."
"I’ve got nothing against noble people, I’ve just noticed they rarely live past forty."
"This effectively ended the power of the Ku Klux Klan in Tampa for three years."
"The most prominent of the victims, the dentist Victor Toll, was rumored to have replaced Kelvin Beauregard as the head of the town Klavern."
"By this point, Joe was mostly out of danger for hemorrhagic shock, the main killer of abdominal knifing victims."
"The point of the knife had glanced off the cover first, altering its path, however slightly."
"The second doctor who examined Joe suspected, due to the angle the blade had traveled during its peritoneal penetration, that there was damage to the spleen, and they cut Joe open again."
"It yawned, and Joe wanted to close his eyes in the face of those magnificent teeth."
"After the surgeries, he was also prohibited from having sex for three months."
"By the second month, he learned a different way to satisfy her, using his mouth."
"If surrendering all preconceived notions of what a man was expected to give and receive from a woman was what it took to feel as pure and useful as he felt with his head between Graciela’s thighs, then he wished he’d lost those notions years ago."
"Near the end of the second day, lying in the red dusk, the shutters reopened to the street, the ceiling fan drying their bodies, Graciela said, 'There will never be another.'"
"Joe didn’t know what his work could be 'taken into consideration' for."
"As Joe drove him to his train for the return journey, Maso said, 'Whatever you need to do on this, you do.'"
"Joe unzipped his fly and withdrew the derringer he’d taken off Manny Bustamente a few years ago."
"Turner John stared past the gun barrel, up Joe’s arm and into his eyes."
"But some bad people are going to want to stop some of those women from leaving their grips."
"Graciela dreamed of land reform and farmers’ rights and a fair distribution of wealth."
"She pressed her open mouth to his neck and exhaled. 'Yes, yes, yes.'"
"She pulled the suds around her neck like a scarf and nodded."
"Loretta’s sad smile brightened. 'Because they’re wrong.'"
"We live by night and dance fast so the grass can't grow under our feet."
"You didn't love me. You just wanted to have me. Like a fucking Grecian vase or a fancy suit."
"We're not God's children, we're not fairy-tale people in a book about true love."
"I'm not a dish. I don't want to be owned. I want to own."
"We all know who you are, Mr. Coughlin. Famous Yankee gangster."
"But when people starve and have nowhere to go, where would you have them end up?"