Gangs of New York

Bill The Butcher: You see this knife? I'm gonna teach you to speak English with this fucking knife!      Amsterdam Vallon: Lord, place the steel of the Holy Spirit in my spine and the love of the Virgin Mary in my heart.      Boss Tweed: The appearance of law must be upheld, especially when it's being broken.      Happy Jack: I come for my due and proper.      Boss Tweed: You killed an elected official?  Bill The Butcher: Who elected him?  Boss Tweed: You don't know what you've done to yourself.  Bill The Butcher: [taps his glass eye with a knife] I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. So because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth! You can build your filthy world without me. I took the father. Now I'll take the son. You tell young Vallon I'm gonna paint Paradise Square with his blood. Two coats. I'll festoon my bedchamber with his guts. As for you, Mr. Tammany-fucking-Hall, you come down to the Points again, and you'll be dispatched by my own hand. Get back to your celebration and let me eat in peace.      [Aside, after speaking to a foreigner]  Boss Tweed: They don't speak English in New York anymore?      Bill The Butcher: He was the only man I ever killed worth remembering.      Bill The Butcher: How old are you, Amsterdam?  Amsterdam Vallon: I'm not sure, sir. I never did quite figure it.  Bill The Butcher: I'm forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? Fear. Fearsome acts. A man steals from me, I cut off his hand. If he lies to me, I cut out his tongue. If he stands up against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike and lift it up for all to see. A spectacle of fearsome acts. That's what maintains the order of things. Fear.      Bill The Butcher: I'm going to paint paradise square with his blood. Two coats.      Bill The Butcher: Each of the five points is a finger. When I close my hand it becomes a fist.      Bill The Butcher: Thank God I died a true American.      Priest Vallon: The blood stays on the blade, son.      Bill The Butcher: Here's the minority vote!      Bill The Butcher: At my challenge, by the ancient laws of combat, we are met at this chosen ground, to settle for good and all who holds sway over the five points: us natives, born rightwise to this fine land, or the foreign hordes defiling it!  Crowd: Yeah!!!  Priest Vallon: By the ancient laws of combat, I accept the challenge of the so called "natives." They plague our people at every turn, but from this day out, they shall plague us no more! For let it be known, that the hand that tries to strike us from this land shall be swiftly cut down!  Crowd: YEAH!!!      Bill The Butcher: Is this it priest, the popes new army, a few crusty bitches and a hand full of rag tags?  Priest Vallon: Now now Bill, you swore this was a battle between warriors, not a bunch of miss nancies, so warriors is what I brought.  [Various Irish Gangs proceed to appear]      Priest Vallon: Now, now Bill. You said that this was a fight for warriors. So warriors is what I brought.      Johnny Sirocco: He's not who he says he is.      Boss Tweed: You killed an elected official!  Bill The Butcher: Who elected him?      McGloin: What's a nigger doing in the church?      Bill The Butcher: Hey, have you met Amsterdam? He almost fish-hooked McGloin.      Boss Tweed: We're burying a lot of votes tonight.      Amsterdam Vallon: It took sand to be a turtledove.      Bill The Butcher: Ears and noses will be the trophies of the day. But no hand shall touch him!      Amsterdam Vallon: When you kill a king, you don't stab him in the dark. You kill him where the entire court can watch him die.      Bill The Butcher: what's your name boy?  Amsterdam Vallon: Amsterdam  Bill The Butcher: Amsterdam? I am New York.      Bill The Butcher: This is a night for Americans!      Bill The Butcher: Anything in your pockets?  Jenny: I ain't started working yet.      Boss Tweed: You know why he wears short sleeves? So they can see he's got nothing stashed. I hope that never becomes the fashion.      Bill The Butcher: Is this the Pope's new army?      Bill The Butcher: Burn him, see if his ashes turn green.      Bill The Butcher: I don't give a tupenny fuck about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed shit-sack!      Amsterdam Vallon: When you get all of the Irish together, you don't have a gang, you have an army.      Monk McGinn: Well that was bloody Shakespearian. Do you know who Shakespeare is? He wrote the King James bible.      Amsterdam Vallon: I give you my word, this all will be finished tomorrow.  Jenny: No, it won't.      Boss Tweed: Look, a boatful of Americans.  Bill The Butcher: What Americans? A bunch of filthy beasts. What do they do for America?  Boss Tweed: They vote.  Bill The Butcher: They vote for who the Archbishop tells them to vote for. And the archbishop gets his orders from their king with his pointy hat, sitting in Rome.      Bill The Butcher: My father gave his life, making this country what it is. Murdered by the British with all of his men on the twenty fifth of July, Anno Domini, 1814. Do you think I'm going to help you befoul his legacy, by giving this country over to them, what's had no hand in the fighting for it? Why, because they come off a boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup!      Happy Jack: I'm paid to uphold the law.  Bill The Butcher: What the hell are you talking about?      Boss Tweed: Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don't make the results, the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting!      Amsterdam Vallon: Is there anyone in the five points you haven't fucked!?!  Jenny: Yes! You!      Bill The Butcher: A real NATIVE is someone who is willing to die fighting for his country. There's nothing more to it.      Bill The Butcher: On the seventh day the Lord rested, but before that he did, he squatted over the side of England and what came out of him.... was Ireland. No offence son.  Amsterdam Vallon: Nah none taken sir, I grew up here, all I ever knew of Ireland was from the talk of the others at the orphan asylum.  Bill The Butcher: And which part of that excrementitious isle where your forebears spawned?  Amsterdam Vallon: I've been told Kerry, I lost proof of it in my language at the asylum.      Bill The Butcher: Civilization is crumbling      Bill The Butcher: WOOPSY DAISY!      Amsterdam Vallon: New York loved William Tweed... and hated him but for those of us trying to be thieves, we couldn't help but admire him.      Boss Tweed: You may or may not know Bill that everyday I go down to the waterfront with hot soup for the Irish as they come ashore. Its part of building a political base.  Bill The Butcher: I've noticed you there, you may have noticed me.  Boss Tweed: Indeed I have. Throwing torrents of abuse to every single person who steps off those boats.  Bill The Butcher: If only I had the guns Mr Tweed I'd shoot each and every one of them before they set foot on American soil.      Bill The Butcher: You! Whatever your name is.. what is your name?  Amsterdam Vallon: Amsterdam Sir.  Bill The Butcher: Amsterdam.... I'm New York... don't you never come in here empty handed again, you gotta pay for the pleasure of my company.      Walter 'Monk' McGinn: I've got forty-four notches on my club. Do you know what they're for? They're to remind me what I owe God when I die. My father was killed in battle too, in Ireland, in the streets, fighting those who would take as their privilege what could only be got and held by the decimation of a race. That war is a thousand years old and more. We never expected it to follow us here. It didn't. It was waiting for us when we landed. Your father tried to carve out a corner of this land for his tribe. That was him, that was his 'Dead Rabbits'. I often wondered, if he had lived a bit longer: would he have wanted a bit more?      Priest Vallon: Prepare to meet the true lord!

~ Home ~ Movies ~ Songs ~ Anonymous ~ Women ~
~ Friendship ~ Life and Success ~ Poems ~ Shakespeare ~ Star Trek ~