- [first lines]
- Nick: Hey, I don't know about you guys, but me... I've had it up to here. There are some 40-odd homicides a day on our streets. There are over two million illegal guns in this city. Man, that's enough guns to invade a whole damn country with. They shoot a cop in our city without thinking twice about it. Aw, come on. You guys ride the subway. How much more of this grief are we gonna stand for? How many more locks we gotta put on our goddamn doors? Now, we ain't got the police, the prosecutors, the courts or the prisons. I mean, it's over. The books don't balance. We are a statistic. Now, I'm tellin' ya, when you can't go to the corner store and buy a pack of cigarettes after dark... because you know the punks and scum are out there on the streets when the sun goes down, and our own government can't protect its own people, then I say this, pal: you got a moral obligation, the right of self-preservation. Now, you can run, you can hide, or you can start to live like human beings again. This is our Waterloo, baby! You want your city back? You gotta take it. Dig it? Take it!
- Nick: How's it going?
- Eddie Marino: Vickie's not comming back. That's how it's going.
- Nick: I see. You blame yourself, huh? Is that why you're running?
- Eddie Marino: I'm getting out of here as fast as I can. That's it. I don't want the police or that gang to come back around here looking for retribution. Look that this. Ten years of my fucking life with this plastic shit. There's gotta be someplace I can start my life over. I don't know where, Nick... But not here where they can kick your ass anytime they feel like it. I don't know anymore.
- Nick: Yeah man, I know how you feel.
- Eddie Marino: No, you don't. My neighbors... they all saw what happened and they didn't do shit. They never called the police nor gave a statement. They all told the cops they saw and heard nothing. Fucking cowards!
- Nick: Forget it, Eddie. They're victims, man. They gave up fighting a long time ago.
- Eddie Marino: Yeah. Everybody's a victim. So what?
- Nick: You're still walking around in the dark, man. You wanna run? Go ahead. After you, then Burke, Ramon, and maybe me. But I'll tell you this: sooner or later, we're gonna run out of places to hide. What do we do then? Huh? Climb on some high mountain where it's nice and safe like in the suburbs? Wrong! After those punks and scum finish turning this whole neighborhood into a cesspool, what makes you think they're not gonna look up at that high mountain of ours and want that too? The word is out on the street, man. The bottom is about to fall out. They want us bad, but they're coming after you first. These are our homes. We give 'em up... and we've got nothing! Fight for it, Eddie. Fight for it!
- Eddie Marino: [struggling with Prago] I'll kill you! You were the one who killed my son!
- Prago: Fuck him! Go ahead, man. Kill me! Go ahead! Death don't mean shit to me!
- Eddie Marino: It does to me!
- [Eddie throws Prago off the building]
- Rake: Eddie, don't come back here. And whatever you gotta do on the outside, don't get caught. You sure don't want your ass back in here.
- Horace: [Sitting in his pimp-mobile, angry, because the prostitutes he's running aren't making any money] Damn recession! How do they expect a working man to make a goddamned living!
- Rake: [after Marino's been accosted by some thugs in the prison cafeteria] You know, if I were you, I'd watch myself.
- Eddie Marino: I didn't ask you nothin'.
- Rake: You're pretty hostile to be a white ass.
- Eddie Marino: I got a right to be anything I want.
- Rake: Man, you're on the rock. You ain't got no rights. You're just another nigger. And just one more word: take that pitiful look off your face, or you won't make it through the day.