Shooter Quotes

Sarah Fenn: What are you going to do?

Bob Lee Swagger: Exercise my right to bear arms.

Howard Purnell: You have embarrassed this office. You will be facing a review from the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Nick Memphis: Sir... I don't, I don't feel embarrassed. A Force Recon Marine Scout Sniper disarmed me three weeks out of the academy. If anything... I feel lucky to be alive.

Bob Lee Swagger: I got a plan, but I think I'm going to need your help.

Sarah Fenn: Ok. I'll do it.

Bob Lee Swagger: I haven't even told you what it is yet.

Sarah Fenn: I know.

Bob Lee Swagger: Where are we meeting?

Colonel Isaac Johnson: Somewhere where I can see you coming from a god damned long way off.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: Bob Lee Swagger, you're a hard man to find.

Bob Lee Swagger: Not hard enough.

[last lines]

Senator Charles F. Meachum: Are you out of your mind? Are you out of your damn mind? I am a United States Senator!

Bob Lee Swagger: Exactly.

Russ Turner: You see this weird shootout in Virginia? Shells everywhere, helicopter remnants, blood, no bodies though, right? And it gets fingerprints off the cartridge cases. First set positively ID'd as Bob Lee Swagger. Second set belongs to Special Agent Nick Memphis of the FBI.

Howard Purnell: Well that's... that's gotta be wrong.

Russ Turner: Now, the only reasonable question to ask after that is: what the fuck is going on?

Howard Purnell: Have you given your official statement yet, 'cuz I would be VERY cautious about what went IN it.

Nick Memphis: Well, maybe I should wait for the report to come out, read it, and THEN remember.

Senator Charles F. Meachum: You got any plans after this? You have a rather unique skill set. I'd be interested in offering you a job.

Bob Lee Swagger: Work? For you?

Senator Charles F. Meachum: It's not really as bad as it seems. It's all gonna be done in any case. You might as well be on the side that gets you well paid for your efforts.

Nick Memphis: And what side are you on?

Senator Charles F. Meachum: There are no sides. There's no Sunnis and Shiites. There's no Democrats and Republicans. There's only HAVES and HAVE-NOTS.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: I won. You lost. Get used to the idea, son.

Bob Lee Swagger: I'm not your son.

Nick Memphis: I didn't know you had a woman.

Bob Lee Swagger: Neither did I... until they took her.

Mr. Rate: That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll they were dead within three hours, buried in the damned desert, unmarked graves out past Terlingua.

Nick Memphis: You know this for a fact?

Mr. Rate: Still got the shovel...

[first lines]

Donnie Fenn: Movement. Two men. Approximately... forty goats.

Bob Lee Swagger: They're not on anybody's side. We don't have to shoot them.

Bob Lee Swagger: I don't really like the President much. Didn't like the one before that, much, either.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: You like the idea of the President, living in a free country. Do we allow America to be ruled by thugs?

Bob Lee Swagger: Sure, some years we do.

Louis Dobbler: You can kill him from that far away?

Bob Lee Swagger: At a mile and a half the bullet's gonna strike with more energy than a .44 magnum, point blank. Yeah, I think you can kill him.

Bob Lee Swagger: Suppose I was looking for man who could make a 2200 yard cold bore shot, who's alive that could do that?

Mr. Rate: Seems I heard about a shot like that being made not too long ago, said the guy's name was Bob Lee Swagger. Never met the man, so I wouldn't know.

Bob Lee Swagger: Ya, they said that alright.

Mr. Rate: They also said that artificial sweeteners were safe, WMDs were in Iraq and Anna Nicole married for love.

Jack Payne: You know what they say is the first thing that a man feels when he shoots a civilian?

Bob Lee Swagger: The recoil of the rifle?

Jack Payne: [snickers] Yeah.

Bob Lee Swagger: Very original.

Sarah Fenn: [checking his bandages] There's something I need to tell you. Ralphie's dead.

Bob Lee Swagger: Who's Ralphie?

Sarah Fenn: They said on the news that you shot your dog because you knew you weren't coming back. I'm sorry.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: Sometimes to catch a wolf you need to tie the bait to a tree.

Michael Sandor: Then what happens to the bait.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: Hard to say, but thats the nature of being the bait.

Michael Sandor: Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger, USMC, Retired. He is the best there is.

Louis Dobbler: His last assignment went wrong. Put in unfriendly territory on a loan-out and left as expendable. Opposing force sent an attack helicopter and a hundred-man company. His best friend and spotter was killed. No official report.

Jack Payne: Ghost report says he inflicted 70 percent casualties; the rest fled.

Louis Dobbler: The Agency asset that left him there to die? Suddenly removed from the face of the earth two weeks after. They never laid it at Bob Lee's feet. He retired a week later.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: I guess Bob Lee didn't think he was expendable.

Mr. Rate: The world is not always as it seems, is it son?

Bob Lee Swagger: No Sir.

Mr. Rate: You keep that in mind.

Nick Memphis: [sips coffee, chokes, coughs]

Mr. Rate: [smiling] Good coffee?

Nick Memphis: Yeah.

Mr. Rate: Would've been a bad job to take, though.

Nick Memphis: How come?

Mr. Rate: Whoever took that shot's probably dead now. That's how conspiracy works. Them boys on the grassy knoll, they were dead within three hours. Buried in the damn desert. Unmarked graves out past Terlingua.

Nick Memphis: And you know this for a fact?

Mr. Rate: Still got the shovel!

Bob Lee Swagger: Sake of argument, somebody other than him?

Mr. Rate: There was a guy in Russia. They locked his ass up. Another one in France. I know he's dead. There was one guy, but he don't shoot no more. A brutal son of a bitch. Most boys shoot to kill. He'd shoot to wound, wait till his friends come to help, kill them too. Turned one target into four. Men, women, children. Killed them by the hundreds. The other side wanted him. Bad. Finally narrowed his hide down to an abandoned six-story building. They quit the subtle tactics. They called in an artillery strike. Leveled a square block. Brought the building down on his ass. Some say he crawled out of there. Some say he died. Never heard from him no more.

Bob Lee Swagger: [recalling the man in the wheelchair, Michael Sandor] Fuck me.

Nick Memphis: What?

Bob Lee Swagger: I met the son of a bitch!

Colonel Isaac Johnson: What the hell am I doing here? You've got nothing on me. I'm covered. Call the Joint Chief.

Attorney General Russert: That won't be necessary, Colonel, as I have already received no less than a dozen calls from highly-ranked and powerfully-placed individuals telling me to let you go. But the joy of checks and balances in our government is that I can, and am, indeed, required by law, to tell them to fuck off.

Michael Sandor: You killed all three?

Bob Lee Swagger: There were four.

Bob Lee Swagger: The Archbishop?

Michael Sandor: You want to take all suspicions away when you shoot someone, wait 'til he's standing next to the President.

Bob Lee Swagger: What was he going to say?

Michael Sandor: The truth. That nothing, no matter how horrible, ever really happens without the approval of the government. Over there, and here. The problem isn't the doing. It's the people in power having to admit that they knew. The prisoners are tortured at Abu Ghraib, and only the underlings go to jail. Their bosses knew. We know their bosses knew. But you don't say it.

Bob Lee Swagger: What exactly happened in Africa?

Michael Sandor: Somehow the villagers didn't think that an oil pipeline was a good enough reason to move their village to a place where the spirit gods didn't exist.

Bob Lee Swagger: They asked them all nicely to move, and they didn't, so they just killed them all?

Michael Sandor: No, they didn't ask. They just killed them. All. So the next village won't need to be asked, they'll just go.

[after Swaggert has proven his innocence, yet Col Johnson has escaped charges for his crimes]

Attorney General Russert: For the record, I don't like the way this turned out any more than you do, but this is the world we live in and justice does not always prevail. It's not the Wild West where you can clean up the streets with a gun... even though sometimes that's exactly what's needed. Bob Lee Swaggert, you're free to go.

[to guards]

Attorney General Russert: Unshackle the sergeant.

Bob Lee Swagger: You know what it takes to make a shot at that range? Everything comes into play that far, humidity, elevation, temperature, wind, spindrift. There's a 6 to 10-second flight time so you have to shoot at where the target's going to be. Even the Coriolis effect, the spin of the Earth, comes into play. President'll be wearing body armour, that means a headshot at over a mile. You believe there's a shooter involved capable of making this shot?

Colonel Isaac Johnson: Yes.

Bob Lee Swagger: Well, then you got a real problem. You need to find the shooter.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: This is our guy.

Jack Payne: I thought he turned you down.

Colonel Isaac Johnson: He said yes. He just doesn't know it yet.