A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.
Ah, it’s a dog’s life. I only wish during the war they’d a took me in the army. I coulda been dead by now.
Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way.
MARCHAND, leaning forward to see Monceau: You would think, though, that with the manpower shortage they’d economize on personnel. In the car that stopped me there was a driver, two French detectives, and a German official of some kind. They could easily have put a notice in the paper – everyone would have come here to present his documents. This way it’s a whole morning wasted. Aside from the embarrassment. LEBEAU: I’m not embarrassed, I’m scared to death. To Bayard: You embarrassed?
BIFF: I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! I’m one dollar an hour, Willy! I tried seven states and couldn’t raise it. A buck an hour! Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing home any prizes any more, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!
You make mountains out of molehills.
I could tell you things about Louis that wouldn’t make you wave at him no more.
Yes, the day the world ended and nobody was innocent again. God, how swiftly it all fell down!
FRANK, peeved: The trouble with you is, you don’t believe in anything. JIM: And your trouble is that you believe in anything. You didn’t see my kid this morning, did you?
CAPTAIN: Try to avoid taking anybody out of a crowd. Just cruise around the way we did before, and take them one at a time. There are all kinds of rumors. We don’t want to alarm people.
Who worked for nothin’ in that war? When they work for nothin’, I’ll work for nothin’. Did they ship a gun or a truck outa Detroit before they got their price? Is that clean? It’s dollars and cents, nickels and dimes; war and peace, it’s nickels and dimes, what’s clean? Half the Goddam country is gotta go if I go! That’s why you can’t tell me.
MOTHER: What more can we be! CHRIS: You can be better! Once and for all you can know there’s a universe of people outside and you’re responsible to it, and unless you know that you threw away your son because that’s why he died.
We used to shoot a man who acted like a dog, but honor was real there, you were protecting something. But here? This is the land of the great big dogs, you don’t love a man here, you eat him! That’s the principle ; the only one we live by.
The human reality of what happens to millions is only for God to grasp; but what happens to individuals is another matter and within the range of mortal understanding.
MONCEAU: In my opinion you’re hysterical. After all, they were picking up Jews in Germany for years before the war, they’ve been doing it in Paris since they came in – are you telling me all those people are dead? Is that really conceivable to you? War is war, but you still have to keep a certain sense of proportion. I mean Germans are still people.
MOTHER: You think just because you like everybody, they like you!
This is not god Marco you hear me, only god makes justice.
Certain things have to be, the sun has to rise.
Every man does have a star. the star of one’s honesty. and you spend your life groping for it, but once its out it never lights again.
Is that as far as your mind can see, the business? What is that, the world – the business? What the hell do you mean, you did it for me? Don’t you have a country? Don’t you live in the world? What the hell are you? You’re not even an animal, no animal kills his own, what are you? What must I do to you? I ought to tear the tongue out of your mouth, what must I do?
To admit what you see endangers principles.