Collateral Quotes

Vincent: Max, six billion people on the planet, you're getting bent out of shape cause of one fat guy.
Max: Well, who was he?
Vincent: What do you care? Have you ever heard of Rwanda?
Max: Yes, I know Rwanda.
Vincent: Well, tens of thousands killed before sundown. Nobody's killed people

that fast since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Did you bat an eye, Max?
Max: What?
Vincent: Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Whales, Greenpeace, or something? No. I off one fat Angelino and you throw a hissy fit.
Max: Man, I don't know any Rwandans.
Vincent: You don't know the guy in the

trunk, either.

Vincent: Look in the mirror. Paper towels, clean cab. Limo company some day. How much you got saved?
Max: That ain't any of your business.
Vincent: Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you will wake up and discover it never happened. It's all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn't happen, and it

never will, because you were never going to do it anyway. You'll push it into memory and then zone out in your barco lounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don't you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln town car. That girl,you can't even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?

Vincent: They project onto you their flaws, what they don't like about themselves. I had a father like that.
Max: Mothers are worse.
Vincent: Wouldn't know. My mother died before I remember her.
Max: What about your father?
Vincent: Hated everything I did. Got drunk, beat me up. In and

out of foster homes, that kinda thing.
Max: And then?
Vincent: I killed him. I was twelve.
[pauses, then laughs]
Vincent: I'm kidding. He died of liver disease.
Max: Well, I'm sorry.
Vincent: No, you're not.

Vincent: Okay, look, here's the deal. Man, you were gonna drive me around tonight, never be the wiser, but El Gordo got in front of a window, did his high dive, we're into Plan B. Still breathing? Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.
Max: I Ching? What are

you talking about, man? You threw a man out of a window.
Vincent: I didn't throw him. He *fell*
Max: Well what did he do to you?
Vincent: What?
Max: What did he do to *you*?
Vincent: Nothing. I only met him tonight.
Max: You just met him once and you

killed him like that?
Vincent: What? I should only kill people after I get to know them?

Max: First time in L.A.?
Vincent: No. Tell you the truth, whenever I'm here I can't wait to leave. It's too sprawled out, disconnected. You know? That's me. You like it?
Max: It's my home.
Vincent: 17 million people. This was a country, it'd be the fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each

other. I read about this guy, gets on the MTA here, dies.
Max: Oh.
Vincent: Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.

[after Vincent and Max load a corpse into the cab's trunk]
Vincent: Lets go.
Max: Hey, why don't you just take the cab?
Vincent: Take the cab?
Max: Yeah, you take it. I'll - I'll chill. I'll - I'll just chill. They don't even know who's driving these things half the time anyway. They never check or

anything. Okay... so... just - just take it. You, me...
Vincent: You promise not to tell anybody right?
Max: Yeah... yeah... yeah... promise.
Vincent: Get in the fucking car.

Fanning: [cops are in alley outside Ramon's apartment] Ramon went through that window... splat. Glass here, then tires rolled over it.
Richard Weidner: Maybe he jumped.
Fanning: Sure... he's depressed so he jumps four stories out of a window onto his head. "Wow, that feels better." Picks himself up. "Now I think I'll go on with the

rest of my day."

Felix: Do you believe in Santa Claus?
Max: No.
Felix: Nor do I. Nor do I, but my children do. They are still small. But do you know who they like even better than Santa Claus? His helper, Pedro el Negro. Black Peter. There's an old Mexican tale that tells of how Santa Claus got so very busy looking out for the good children that he

had to hire some help to look out for the bad children. So he hired Pedro. And Santa Claus gave him a list with all the names of all the bad children. And Pedro would come every night to check them out. And the people, the little kids that were misbehaving, that were not saying their prayers, Pedro would leave a little toy donkey on their window. A little burro. And he would come back, and if the

children were still misbehaving, Pedro would take them away, and nobody would ever see them again. Now, if I am being Santa Claus, and you are Pedro, how do you think jolly Santa Claus would feel if one day Pedro came into his office and said, 'I lost the list.' How fucking furious do you think he will get?
Max: I think... I think you should tell the guy standing behind me

to put his gun away.
Felix: What?
Max: I said, I think you should tell him to put the gun down before I rip it out of his hand and beat his bitch-ass to death with it.