Bloom: Eat your waffles, fat man.
Stephen: That's my new favorite camel.
The Curator: The Curator: Madam, your smile is the sun and fallen men like me, we need the sun.
Stephen: I have at different times in my life, sold sand to an Arab and ice to an Eskimo.
Bang Bang: [after blowing up the Prague castle] Fuck me...
Bloom: Do you feel cheated?

Penelope Stamp: The trick to not feeling cheated is to learn how to cheat.
Stephen: The score to beat is 7.9. Keep your head in the game, that Japanese judge is very tough.

Bloom: This is a banana seat, man.

[Stephen and Bang Bang stare at him]

Bloom: Don't give me that blank look. You know what a goddamn banana seat is.
Bloom: There's actually a nack to this. If you're trying to fast-track to a mark's sympathies, there's nothing quite as effective as having your first conversation be from a hospital bed... they put you in.
Penelope Stamp: I think you're constipated, in your fucking soul... I think you might have a really big load of grumpy petrified poop up your soul's ass.
Penelope Stamp: Oh my god, I'm so horny!

Bloom: [exiting] Goodnight.
Penelope Stamp: A thunderstorm! I LOVE thunderstorms!
Young Stephen: Let 'em melt.

[he and Bloom walk away in slo mo. A Rod Stewart song starts playing]
[repeated line]

Stephen: Tastes like tinfoil.
Bloom: How did you find me?

Penelope Stamp: Bang Bang.

Bloom: Bang Bang?

Penelope Stamp: She gave me her cell number.

Bloom: Bang Bang has a cell phone?
Stephen: See, you've reached an unethical conclusion. You think you want out, but you don't. One last con.

Bloom: Where are we going?

Stephen: New Jersey.

Bloom: ...I'll get my coat...
Stephen: Can I get a 'wow'?
Penelope Stamp: I don't know about "truths." A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells, the less you know.
Stephen: The perfect con is one where everyone involved gets just what they wanted.
Stephen: You were the only audience I ever needed.
Penelope Stamp: This was a story about a girl who could find infinite beauty in anything, any little thing, and even love the person she was trapped with. And i told myself this story until it became true. Now, did doing this help me escape a wasted life? Or did it blind me so I didn't want to escape it? I don't know, but either way I was the one telling my own story...
The Curator: Your smile is the sun, ma chère. And fallen men, we need the sun.
Penelope Stamp: I know I'm pretending to be a smuggler ba ba ba... BUT what you don't know is that I'm a real smuggler because I tell it like I own it. You know what your problem is? You just gotta stop thinking and just enjoy the ride man.
Penelope Stamp: There is no such thing as an unwritten life, only a badly written one.
Narrator: and being who he wasn't, could be as he wished to be
Penelope Stamp: I think a little real danger might suit me, so, uh, if you three want to join my smugglers gang, I'll uh, y'know, uh... consider it.
Bloom: Trying to get something real by telling yourself stories is a trap.
Bloom: You don't understand what my brother does. He writes his cons the way dead Russians write novels, with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism and shit. And he wrote me as the vulnerable anti-hero. And that's why you think you want to kiss me. It's a con.
Stephen: [Opening a gate at the zoo] Is this the bathroom? Nnnnno. This is camels.
Stephen: I'm not thrilled they set this in Mexico. There could be legitimate reasons, but Mexico's- and I don't like to simplistically vilify an entire country- but Mexico's a horrible place.
[first lines]

Narrator: As far as con man stories go, I think I've heard them all. Of grifters, ropers, faro-fixers; tails drawn long and tall. But if one bears a bookmark in the confidence man's tome, it would be that of Penelope, and of the brothers Bloom.
Young Stephen: [precociously observing] Playground bourgeoisies.
Penelope Stamp: I'm an epileptic photographer.
Stephen: In my story you don't get the money, or the sunset, or the girl.
Diamond Dog: Our hero must face the Minotaur before he escapes the maze.
[last lines]

Penelope Stamp: He said to me, there's no such thing as an unwritten life. Just a badly written one.

Bloom: Oh God.

Penelope Stamp: I love you Bloom. You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna live. Like we're telling the best story in the whole world.

Penelope Stamp: Are you ready?

Bloom: [narrating] And Stephen said something else one. The perfect con is one where everyone involved gets just the thing they wanted.
Stephen: Have at thee, you ham-headed bastards!
Narrator: Another home, another main street. Stephen looked around, then summed the burgh up thusly:

Young Stephen: Bloom, we've hit a one hat town.

Narrator: One theater. One car wash. One café. One park. One cat. Which, through some mishap, had one leg.
Young Stephen: [to Bloom, after finishing their first con] So how's it feel?

Narrator: In truth, young Bloom won't know for twenty years just how he felt.

[Beat]

Narrator: And so, we'll skip ahead now in our story.
Stephen: We're a genius, Bloom.
Bloom: I can't wake up next to another stranger, who thinks they know me, or even wants to know me, cause I don't know - who - I'm thirty five years old, and I, I'm useless, I'm crippled, I don't, I've only ever lived life through these roles that aren't me, that are written for me by you.

Stephen: Tell me what you want.

Bloom: Why? So you can write me a role in a story where I get it? You're not listening to me. I want a real... thing, I wanna do things how I don't know are gonna work out, a-I, want, a...

Stephen: You want an unwritten life.
Penelope Stamp: I collect hobbies. I see someone doing something I like, and I get books and learn how to do it.
Stephen: So what are your plans in Greece?

Penelope Stamp: I don't plan.

Stephen: Good for you.
Bloom: What was your childhood like?

Penelope Stamp: I make cameras out of watermelons.
Stephen: [about the Curator] Penelope, do you know our friend?

Stephen: Only as the creepy Frenchman.

The Brothers Bloom Quotes

Extended Reading

The Brothers Bloom short comments

Jadon 2022-04-24 07:01:15

The criss-crossing truth and lies, so that the final outcome is unconvincing whether it is true or false, some people may say it is artificial, but it is also a kind of small and fresh.
Kole 2022-03-26 09:01:08

When I first saw the title of the movie, I thought it was about brotherhood, but I didn't see it for a long time; the two brothers depended on deception for a living, so I waited for a long time to see the subtle deception, but I didn't see it for a long time; Rachel Reitz appeared, so I waited to see love, see It didn't take a long time, and not only that, I found that this film doesn't even have common sense. The woman who was deceived actually found it back, and the man who was full of guilt actually wanted to deceive her again in order to make her give up. There is no logic in this.