- [first lines]
- Leonard: [narrating] Landscape is destiny. I've carried that phrase in my head for years now. I can't remember where it comes from, but I know what it means here. It's a sense of being closed-in. Human limitation. It's different from the Midwest, where possibility sprawls bright and endless in every direction. People in the Himalayas, the Andes, do they live in the passive voice too, like their live aren't real? Their memories fixed, immutable?
- Leonard: [narrating] Toomey was wrong, killing is easy. Or at least easier than a whole lot of other things in life. Easier than love - or happiness - or making money - or raising a child. So easy you could do it with no more than one finger pressed in a small metal curve. Or even by doing nothing at all - just being there, and letting it happen. The passive voice.
- Leonard: Violence begets violence. It doesn't stop. It's like a sickness. Just gets passed on from one generation to the next.
- Travis: Ya know, they say you shot some guy up in Illinois... Well, did you?
- Leonard: Depends on which incident you mean. The one where I shot the guy in both shoulders, or the one whose hand I blew off.
- Leonard: Never shot anybody in my life. I never bothered to set the record straight... Folks I deal, better if they think I'm a little tougher than I am.
- Carlton: Don't tell nobody that you caught me with the newspapers. Bad for my image. You get a fella to believin' that he's smarter than you, you can get him to do any damn thing you want. How are you on crosswords?
- Leonard: What are you stuck on?
- Carlton: Ten-letter word for surrender. Seventh letter is, uh, L.
- Leonard: Capitulate.
- Carlton: There ya go...