Live by Night Quotes

Graciella Suarez: Even if you win today's battle, there's so much violence in what you do.

Joe Coughlin: You don't think I'm strong enough?

Graciella Suarez: I don't know if you're cruel enough.

Joe Coughlin: Powerful men don't have to be cruel.

[from trailer]

Loretta Figgis: My father says there once was a good man in you.

Joe Coughlin: We all find ourselves in lives we didn't expect.

Loretta Figgis: Repent. Repent. Repent.

[from trailer]

Loretta Figgis: We're all going to hell.

[from trailer]

Joe Coughlin: Maybe it's true. We all find ourselves in lives we didn't expect. But what I learned was powerful men don't have to be cruel. I got one guaranteed life, I was gonna live it. I had a plan. Do you think that we got where we are by lettin' some inbreds muscle us?

Virgil Beauregard: If that's what you think we are, you makin' a fatal miscalculation. We're clerks, bankers, police officers, we ain't gotta judge. And if ya didn't wanna have to fight us, I'm gon rain bloody hellfire down on you and all you love.

Joe Coughlin: So you're threatening me with people that are more powerful than you?

Virgil Beauregard: [shrugs] Exactly.

Joe Coughlin: ...So who am I talkin' to you for?

Dion Bartolo: [pulls gun, shoots at Beauregard]

[first lines]

Joe Coughlin: [narrating] In 1917, I signed up to fight the Huns in France. Good men died all around me, and I saw no reason for it. The rules we lived by were lies. And they didn't apply to those who made them. I swore If I made it home, I would never follow orders again. I left a soldier, I came home an outlaw.

Joe Coughlin: I'm crazy about her.

Thomas Coughlin: Crazy isn't love.

Joe Coughlin: Can you tolerate an Irishman in your crew?

Maso Pescatore: This is America. I've lived worse.

Graciella Suarez: [about chess metaphor] You might do well to remember that the pawn and the king end up in the same box at the end of the game.

Graciella Suarez: The end? It's not about the end. It's about while you're playing the game. You can hang me upside down light me on fire at the end. I wanna win while I'm playing.

Joe Coughlin: I have feeling you win most of the games you play.

Chief Figgis: If you're going to kill him, be man enough to pull the trigger. Ain't no pride in having other people do what you're too weak to do yourself.

Joe Coughlin: Okay. In my experience doesn't take much to pull the trigger.

Joe Coughlin: More booze has been drunk in the last ten years than ever before. Because people don't wanna be told that they can't do it.

Loretta Figgis: The same could be said of fornication. People want it, but don't wanna be told they can't have it.

Joe Coughlin: Nor should they.

Loretta Figgis: I'm sorry?

Joe Coughlin: If people want to fornicate, I see no reason to stop them.

Loretta Figgis: And if they wish to lie down with animals?

Joe Coughlin: Do they?

Loretta Figgis: I'm Sorry?

Joe Coughlin: Do people wish to lie down with animals?

[last lines]

Joe Coughlin: [narrating] On Saturdays I take my son to the shows.

[Hitler]

Joe Coughlin: Some little German guy is making trouble overseas. I don't believe they will fight another war though. No percentage in it... My son loved the show. It was about an honest sheriff in a dirty town. All he could talk about was getting his own badge when he grew up.

Joe Coughlin: [in the theater to his little boy sitting] That's my brother. That was my brother's name. That's your uncle.

Joe Coughlin: [narration continues] In the afternoon we fish for red-fins. One day my son asked me "Where is heaven in the sky?"I told him what Loretta told to me. "This is heaven, right here. We are in it now."

Digger Pescatore, Maso Pescatore: [on Graciella] Is She A S*ic Or A Ni**er?

Joe Coughlin: [not looking up] She's Both!

[last lines]

Chief Figgis: [repeatedly as he opens fire on Joe's home] Repent... Repent... Repent... REPENT!