Martin Scorsese cemented his status as one of the great directors with the release of the crime drama Goodfellas in 1990. The mafia epic is based on the true story of the Irish-Italian gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) who would become a trusted member of a local New York crime family before eventually turning on them and finding himself in Witness Protection. Chock full of twists and turns, sudden violence, incredible performances, and with more Goodfellas quotes than the number of times the word fuck features (it’s said over 300 times), this movie is one of the greatest cinematic releases of the past three decades.
Adapted from Nicholas Pileggi’s 1985 book, Wiseguys, the movie is an expletive-filled mafioso drama with plenty of violence and a star-making turn from Liotta. He is well supported by a colorful cast of acting legends and cameo kings, including Robert De Niro as older mobster James, aka Jimmy Conway, Joe Pesci as the loose cannon wiseguy Tommy DeVito, Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill, Henry’s wife, and Paul Sorvino as organized crime boss Paul Cicero. Other recognizable faces include half of The Sopranos cast (Frank Sivero, Michael Imperioli, Tony Sirico, and Frank Vincent), Mike Starr, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Goodfellas was an unexpected hit that made a relatively tame $47 million at the box office but was lavished with praise from critics. It went on to win several awards, with Pesci claiming the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. Scorsese perfected many of his famed director quirks with Goodfellas, including the continuous tracking shot, breaking the fourth wall, and his use of famous songs that somehow fit perfectly with the action on screen.
In the year 2000, the United States Library of Congress selected Goodfellas for preservation in the National Film Registry, demonstrating how incredible this movie is. A pop cultural phenomenon, many of the best lines of dialogue from the movie are often repeated by fans in everyday conversation. To demonstrate how far-reaching this movie is, here is a collection of the best Goodfellas quotes and dialogue. Now go home and get your fucking shine box!
1. “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” – Henry Hill
2. “Attaboy! I got respect for this kid. He’s got a lot of fucking balls. Good for you! Don’t take no shit off nobody.” – Jimmy Conway
3. “Who the fuck cares? I’ll dig the fuckin’ hole. I don’t give a fuck. What is it, the first hole I dug? Not the first time I dug a hole. I’ll fuckin’ dig a hole. Where are the shovels?” – Tommy DeVito
4. “One day, some of the kids from the neighborhood carried my mother’s groceries all the way home. You know why? It was outta respect.” – Henry Hill
5. “You’re a real jerk. You wasted eight fuckin’ aprons on this guy. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with you. I gotta toughen this kid up.” – Tuddy Cicero
6. “Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” – Jimmy Conway
7. “You mean – let me understand this, ‘cause, you know, maybe it’s me, I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean, funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?” – Tommy DeVito
8. “I’m not mad, I’m proud of you. You took your first pinch like a man and you learn two great things in your life. Look at me, never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.” – Jimmy Conway
9. “Fuck you, pay me!” – Henry Hill
10. “I’m gonna go get the papers, get the papers.” – Jimmy Two-Times
11. “You stupid bastard, I can’t fuckin’ believe you. Now, you’re gonna dig the fuckin’ thing now. You’re gonna dig the hole. You’re gonna do it. I got no fuckin’ lime. You’re gonna do it.” – Jimmy Conway
12. “I like this one. One dog goes one way, the other dog goes the other.” – Tommy DeVito
13. “Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with a bill, he can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.” – Henry Hill
14. “I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn’t. I got to admit the truth. It turned me on.” – Karen Hill
15. “You know, we always called each other goodfellas. Like you’d say to somebody: ‘You’re gonna like this guy, he’s all right. He’s a goodfella. He’s one of us.’ You understand? We were goodfellas, wiseguys.” – Henry Hill
16. “Now go home and get your fucking shine box.” – Billy Batts
17. “I like going this way. It’s better than waiting in line.” – Henry Hill
18. “Ya motherfucker! I almost had him, I almost had him. Ya stuttering prick ya. Frankie, was he shaking? I wonder about you sometimes, Henry. You may fold under questioning.” – Tommy DeVito
19. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Tommy?” – Spider
20. “Jimmy was the kind of guy who rooted for the bad guy in movies.” – Henry Hill
21. “They whacked him. They fucking whacked him.” – Jimmy Conway
22. “For us, to live any other way was nuts. To us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, worried about their bills, were dead. I mean, they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something, we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again.” – Henry Hill
23. “I got to have it. It’s my lucky hat. I never fly without it.” – Lois the babysitter
24. “She’ll never divorce him. She’ll kill him but she won’t divorce him.” – Jimmy Conway
25. “I didn’t want to get blood on your floor.” – Tommy DeVito
26. “Medium-rare… an aristocrat.” – Johnny Dio
27. “You’d be late for your own fuckin’ funeral … What the fuck you lookin’ at? Come on, make that coffee to go. Let’s go.” – Tommy DeVito
28. “For a second, I thought I was dead, but when I heard all the noise, I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If they had been wiseguys, I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I would’ve been dead.” – Henry Hill
29. “I don’t give a fuck whose name it’s on! Are you stupid or what? Did you hear what I said? Don’t buy anything, don’t get anything! Nothing big. Didn’t you hear what I said? What’s the matter with you?” – Jimmy Conway
30. “If you’re part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they’re going to kill you. It doesn’t happen that way. There aren’t any arguments or curses like in the movies. See, your murderers come with smiles. They come as your friends, the people who have cared for you all of your life, and they always seem to come at a time when you’re at your weakest and most in need of their help.” – Henry Hill
31. “Fuckin’ rat anyway. His family’s all rats. He’ll grow up to be a rat.” – Tommy DeVito
32. “Jimmy and I could never be made because we had Irish blood, didn’t even matter that my Mother was Sicilian.” – Henry Hill
33. “I settle down with a nice girl every night, but then in the morning I’m free.” – Tommy DeVito
34. “Everybody else in the joint was doing real time, mixed together living like pigs. But we lived alone, we owned the joint.” – Henry Hill
35. “I’ll fuck him in his ass. I fucked kids like him in the can in the ass. Fuckin’ trying to break up my party.” – Billy Batts
36. “I need this knife Ma’. I’m gonna take this, is that okay?” – Tommy DeVito
37. “You got some nerve standing me up like that last night! Nobody does that to me! Who the Hell do you think you are? Frankie Valli or some kinda bigshot?” – Karen Hill
38. “What, do you got me on a fuckin’ pay-no-mind list, kid?” – Tommy DeVito
39. Tommy DeVito: “Hey Frank, let’s chop him up.” Frankie Carbone: “All right.” Tommy DeVito: “Where you going? Where you going, you dizzy motherfucker, you?” Frankie Carbone: “To chop him up.” Tommy DeVito: “At Charlie’s, not here!”
40. “It was like he had two families. The first time I was introduced to all of them at once, it was crazy. Paulie and his brothers had lots of sons and nephews. And almost all of them were named Peter or Paul. It was unbelievable. There must have been two dozen Peters and Pauls at the wedding. Plus, they were all married to girls named Marie. And they named all their daughters Marie. By the time I finished meeting everybody, I thought I was drunk.” – Karen Hill
41. “Killing’s got to be accepted. Murder was the only way that everybody stayed in line. You got out of line, you got whacked. Everybody knew the rules.” – Henry Hill
42. “Hey, what do you like, the leg or the wing, Henry? Or ya still go for the old hearts and lungs?” – Tommy DeVito
43. “It was easy for all of us to disappear. My house was in my mother-in-law’s name. My cars were registered to my wife. My social security cards and driver’s licenses were phonies. I never voted. I never paid taxes. My birth certificate and my arrest sheet… that’s all you’d ever have to know I was alive.” – Henry Hil
44. “Oklahoma Kid. That’s me. I’m the Oklahoma Kid. You fuckin’ varmint! Dance. Dance. Yahoo, ya motherfucker!” – Tommy DeVito
45. “This drink is better than sex, baby.” – Stacks Edwards
46. “All they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the FBI can never understand – that what Paulie and the organization offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can’t go to the cops. They’re like the police department for wiseguy.” – Henry Hill
47. Karen: “What do you do?” Henry Hill: “I’m in construction.” Karen: [She feels the softness of his hands] “They don’t feel like you’re in construction.” Henry Hill: “Ah, I’m a union delegate.”
48. “You know Spider, you’re a fuckin’ mumbling stuttering little fuck. You know that?” – Tommy DeVito
49. Tommy DeVito: “We hit the deer and his paw… What do you call it? The paw.” Jimmy Conway: “[Speaking through a mouth full of pasta] The hoof.” Tommy DeVito: “It got caught in the grill. I got to hack it off.”
50. “You might know who we are. We know who you are, understand?” – Jimmy Conway
51. “After a while, it got to be all normal. None of it seemed like crime. It was more like Henry was enterprising, and that he and the guys were making a few bucks hustling, while all the other guys were sitting on their asses, waiting for handouts. Our husbands weren’t brain surgeons, they were blue-collar guys. The only way they could make extra money, real extra money, was to go out and cut a few corners.” – Karen Hill
52. “He said, ‘No, you’re gonna tell me something today, tough guy.’ I said, ‘All right, I’ll tell you something: go fuck your mother.'” – Tommy DeVito
53. “One night, Bobby Vinton sent us champagne. There was nothing like it. I didn’t think there was anything strange in any of this. You know, a twenty-one-year-old kid with such connections. He was an exciting guy. He was really nice. He introduced me to everybody. Everybody wanted to be nice to him. And he knew how to handle it.” – Karen Hill
54. “That’s the hardest part. Today, everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. I can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.” – Henry Hill
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