Bringing Out the Dead Quotes

Frank Pierce: I gotta get a drink. Sobriety's killing me.

Mary Burke: You have to be strong to survive in this city.

Frank Pierce: Oh, I see. With all the poor people of this city who wanted only to live and were viciously murdered, you have the nerve to sit here, wanting to die, and not go through with it? You make me sick!

Frank Pierce: Saving someone's life is like falling in love. The best drug in the world. For days, sometimes weeks afterwards, you walk the streets, making infinite whatever you see. Once, for a few weeks, I couldn't feel the earth - everything I touched became lighter. Horns played in my shoes. Flowers fell from my pockets. You wonder if you've become immortal, as if you've saved your own life as well. God has passed through you. Why deny it, that for a moment there - why deny that for a moment there, God was you?

Frank Pierce: The street is so much more unpredictable than the ER and to prepare for the unexpected I was taught to act without thinking, like an army private who can take apart and reassemble a gun blindfolded. I realized that my training was useful in less than ten percent of the calls and saving someone's life was rarer than that. As the years went by I grew to understand that my role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness. I was a grief mop and much of my job was to remove, if even for a short time, the grief starter or the grief product. It was enough I simply showed up.

Frank Pierce: Tom, where are the Band-Aids? This IS an ambulance, isn't it?

Griss: Don't make me take off my sunglasses!

Dr. Hazmat: I'm gonna hafta intubate because the kid's mother won't sign the Do Not Resuscitate. Mercy killing doesn't translate well in Spanish.

Tom Wall: Frank, what do you know? It's you and me again tonight. The rough riders, tearing up the streets, just like old times. This old bus is a warrior, Frank. I have tried to kill her, but she will not die. I have a great respect for that.

Dispatcher: Twelve David, on the corner of Thirty-eight and Two you'll find a three car accident. Two taxis and a taxi. One-two Henry, 427 East Two-two, report of a very bad smell.

Dispatcher: You'll be going to the man who needs no introduction. Chronic caller of the year three straight and shooting for number four. The duke of drunk, the king of stink, our most frequent flier, Mr. Oh.

Marcus: I'm a true cocksman. I don't mix my seed. The only time I touch a white woman is when I'm holding her down for the police.

Marcus: The first step is love, the second is mercy.

Tom Wall: 66-Exterminator here. We like our coffee bloody!

Griss: Griss cannot abide the funk tonight.

Marcus: Don't tell me about the Good book now, son. I'll preach heaven and beat the hell outta you.

Frank Pierce: I'd always had nightmares, but now the ghosts didn't wait for me to sleep. I drank every day. Help others and you help yourself, that was my motto, but I hadn't saved anyone in months. It seemed all my patients were dying. I'd waited, sure the sickness would break, tomorrow night, the next call, the feeling would drop away. More than anything else I wanted to sleep like that, close my eyes and drift away...

Frank Pierce: Taking credit when things go right doesn't work the other way.

Marcus: Ever notice people who see shit are always crazy?

Frank Pierce: The streets are not like the ER. There's no walls, no controls.

Rose: It's not your fault. No one asked you to suffer. That was your idea.

Mary Burke: Do you wanna f*** me? Everyone else has.

Dispatcher: Respond to a 10-22, four flight residential, 417 West 32, 77 David at 177 west 24. There's a woman who says a roach crawled in her ear, can't get it out, says she's going into cardiac arrest.

Frank Pierce: In the last year, I'd come to believe in such things... as spirits leaving the body and not wanting to be put back. Spirits angry at the awkward places death had left them. I understood how crazy it was to think this way. But I was convinced that if I turned around, I'd see old man Burke... standing at the window, watching, waiting for us to finish.

Frank Pierce: The biggest problem with not driving is whenever there's a patient in the back, you're in the back. The doors close. You're trapped.

Frank Pierce: 5 or 6 in the morning is always the worst time for me. Just before dawn. Just when you've been lulled into thinking it might be safe to close your eyes for one minute. That's when I first found Rose. She was on the sidewalk, not breathing.

Marcus: Look at these women. Can't even tell who's a hooker no more. Whatever happened to go-go boots and hot pants. They'll wear anything now.

Dispatcher Love: 62 Young, I don't have time for all your games. Now answer me or do I have to come out there myself?

Frank Pierce: You have to keep the body going until the brain and the heart recover enough to go on their own.

Frank Pierce: Rose's ghost was getting closer. It had been six months since I lost her. A homeless girl, asthmatic, 18 years old. I used to block the bad calls out. I used to forget, but she wouldn't let go. And now she'd come to bear witness for all of them, all that had been lost. These spirits were part of the job. It was impossible to pass a building that didn't hold a ghost of something. The eyes of a corpse. The screams of a loved one. All bodies leave their mark. You cannot be near the newly dead without feeling it. I could handle that. What haunted me now was more savage. Spirits born half-finished. Homicides. Suicides. Overdoses. Accusing me of being there, witnessing a humiliation, which they could never forgive.

Frank Pierce: I washed my face with three kinds of soap, each smelling like a different season. It felt good to be in a woman's room again, especially a woman who wasn't comatose or severely disabled. I felt that perhaps I had turned a corner, like I saved someone, though I didn't know who.

Tom Wolls: Sir, I am going to give you some medicine that is still very experimental. It's from NASA, and although the astronauts have been using it for years, we are the first service to try it. I will put this patch on your forehead like this, and in about a minute you will have to relax. You will forget all your suicidal feelings. It's very important that you wear this for a least twenty- four hours and keep checking the mirror. If the patch turns green you have to see the doctor immediately. The side effects could be fatal.