[Thomas] Jefferson’s an American saint, because he wrote the words ‘All men are created equal’, words he clearly didn’t believe since he allowed his own children to live in slavery. He was a rich wine snob who was sick of paying taxes to the Brits. So yeah, he wrote some lovely words and aroused the rabble and they went out and died for those words while he sat back and drank his wine and fucked his slave girl. This guy wants to tell me we’re living in a community? Don’t make me laugh. I’m living in America, and in America you’re on your own. America’s not a country, it’s just a business. Now fuckin’ pay me.
Jackie Cogan [Brad Pitt], Killing Them Softly (2012)
I am the police, and I’m here to arrest you. You’ve broken the law. I did not write the law. I may even disagree with the law, but I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg, or attempt to stir my sympathies, nothing you do will stop me from placing you in a steel cage with grey bars. If you run away, i will chase you. If you fight me, I will fight back. If you shoot at me, I will shoot back. By law I am unable to walk away. I’m a consequence. I am the unpaid bill. I am fate with a badge and a gun. Behind my badge is a heart like yours. I bleed. I think. I love, and yes, I can be killed. And although I am but one man, I have thousands of brothers and sisters who are the same as me. They will lay down their lives for me, and I them. We stand watch together, a thin blue line, protecting the prey from the predators, the good from the bad. We are the police.
Brian Taylor [Jake Gyllenhaal], End of Watch (2012)
I was one of the insatiables. The ones you’d always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles of the rows behind us. Before they’d been relayed back from row to row, spectator to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned to the projectionist’s cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened us… from the world.
Matthew [Michael Pitt], The Dreamers (2003)
The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different. But perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same, so we must celebrate the changes. Because as someone once said: ‘Everything will be all right in the end. And if it’s not all right, then trust me, it’s not yet the end.’
Evelyn Greenslade (Judi Dench), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012)