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[from trailer]
[repeated line]
Frank: Fuck You
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Roberta: I've said goodbye before to people I love.
Jim Bennett: Yeah, whatever did happen to Dad?
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Jim Bennett: You're born as a man with the nerves of a soldier, the apprehension of an angel
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Jim Bennett: I've been up two and a half million dollars.
Frank: What you got on you?
Jim Bennett: Nothing.
Frank: What you put away?
Jim Bennett: Nothing.
Frank: You get up two and a half million dollars, any asshole in the world knows what to do: you get a house with a 25 year roof, an indestructible Jap-economy shitbox, you put the rest into the system at three to five percent to pay your taxes and that's your base, get me? That's your fortress of fucking solitude. That puts you, for the rest of your life, at a level of fuck you. Somebody wants you to do something, fuck you. Boss pisses you off, fuck you! Own your house. Have a couple bucks in the bank. Don't drink. That's all I have to say to anybody on any social level. Did your grandfather take risks?
Jim Bennett: Yes.
Frank: I guarantee he did it from a position of fuck you. A wise man's life is based around fuck you. The United States of America is based on fuck you. You're a king? You have an army? Greatest navy in the history of the world? Fuck you! Blow me. We'll fuck it up ourselves.
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Jim Bennett: There was a student... just the other day... who said that my problem, if one's nature is a problem, rather than just problematic, is that I see things in terms of victory or death, and not just victory but total victory. And it's true: I always have. It's either victory, or don't bother. The only thing worth doing is the impossible. Everything else is gray. You're born... as a man... with the nerves of a soldier, the apprehension of an angel, to lift a phrase, but there is no use for it. Here? Where's the use for it? You're set up to be a philosopher or a king or Shakespeare, and this is all they give you? This? Twenty- odd years of school which is all instruction in how to be ordinary... or they'll fucking kill you, they fucking will, and then it's a career, which is not the same thing as existence... I want unlimited things. I want everything. A real love. A real house. A real thing to do... every day. I'd rather die if I don't get it. Did I just say that out loud?
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Neville Baraka: What about your family?
Jim Bennett: I got all I could get.
Neville Baraka: Can I get the money from them? If I send you to Mexico, you know, 'Oh my God! I don't know what happened to him!' Get my friend Valario to mail 'em your dick.
Jim Bennett: My family don't make the money because they pay up easily.
Neville Baraka: Apparently that's genetic.
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Ed: What do you say to the fact that I'm gonna die?
Jim Bennett: [tearing up] I'm going to miss you.
Ed: Fuck that. I won't know about that. I need to know what you're worth when I leave you nothing.
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Jim Bennett: I'll do the best I can. You can go knowing that, okay?
Ed: You're me now... if you'll have it.
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Jim Bennett: I could stand here, stark naked, and I could YELL AS LOUD AS I WANT, and nobody would care.
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[after learning of Jim's situation]
Frank: What's wrong with you? You got brain damage?
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Frank: If I give you this money and you don't pay me back, there are no rules. Do you understand the gravity of your situation?
Jim Bennett: I know what I have to do.
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[to his college students]
Jim Bennett: If you take away nothing else from my class, desiring a thing cannot make you have it.
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Roberta: What will they do to you if you don't pay?
Jim Bennett: [nonchalantly] Break every bone in my body.
[she immediately slaps him in the face]
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[Neville is watching the basketball game]
Neville Baraka: Stay on the bench, Lamar. Stay on that fuckin' bench, Lamar. Stay on the fuckin' bench!
The Gambler Quotes
Extended Reading
