- Amsterdam Vallon: It's a funny feeling being taken under the wing of a dragon. It's warmer than you'd think.
- 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.
- Amsterdam Vallon: In the end, they put candles on the bodies so's their friends, if they had any, could know them in the dark. The city did this free of charge. Shang, Jimmy Spoils, Hell-cat, McGloin, and more. Friend or foe, didn't make no difference now. It was four days and nights before the worst of the mob was finally put down. We never knew how many New Yorkers died that week before the city was finally delivered. My father told me we was all born of blood and tribulation, and so then too was our great city. But for those of us what lived and died in them furious days, it was like everything we knew was mightily swept away. And no matter what they did to build this city up again... for the rest of time... it would be like no one ever knew we was even here.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: How old are you, Amsterdam?
- Amsterdam Vallon: I'm not sure, sir. I never did quite figure it.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: I'm forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts. Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That's what preserves the order of things. Fear.
- Amsterdam Vallon: There's more of us coming off these ships each day. I heard 15,000 Irish a week. And we're afraid of the Natives? Get all of us together, we ain't got a gang, we got an army. And all you needs is a spark. Right? Just one spark. Something to wake us all up.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: At my challenge, by the ancient laws of combat, we have met at this chosen ground, to settle for good and all who holds sway over the Five Points: us natives, born right wise to this fine land, or the foreign hordes defiling it.
- Native Gangs: 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.
- Irish Gangs: YEAH.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Then may the Christian Lord guide my hand, against your Roman popery.
- Priest Vallon: Prepare to receive the true Lord!
- [the enemy gangs rush into battle]
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Here's the thing. I don't give a tuppenny fuck about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed shit-sack. That's more or less the thing. And I want you to go out there... You, nobody else. None of your little minions. I want you to go out there. And I want you to punish the person who's responsible for murdering this poor little rabbit. Is that understood?
- Boss Tweed: You killed an elected official?
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Who elected him?
- Boss Tweed: You don't know what you've done to yourself.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: [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.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: You. Whatever your name is... what is your name?
- Amsterdam Vallon: Amsterdam, sir.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Amsterdam... I'm New York... don't you never come in here empty handed again, you gotta pay for the pleasure of my company.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: You see this knife? I'm gonna teach you to speak English with this fucking knife!
- 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 goes to wipe blood off razor]
- Priest Vallon: No son, never. The blood stays on the blade. One day you'll understand.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: The Priest and me, we lived by the same principles. It was only faith divided us. He gave me this, you know? That was the finest beating I ever took. My face was pulp. My guts was pierced, my ribs was all mashed up. And when he came to finish me, I couldn't look him in the eye. He spared me, because he wanted me to live in shame. This was a great man. A great man. So I out out the eye that looked away, I sent it to him wrapped in blue paper. I would've cut them both out if I could have fought him blind. And I rose back up again with a full heart... and buried him in his own blood. He was the only man I ever killed worth remembering.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Mulberry Street... and Worth... Cross and Orange... and Little Water. Each of the Five Points is a finger. When I close my hand it becomes a fist. And, if I wish, I can turn it against you.
- [last lines]
- Amsterdam Vallon: ...And no matter what they did to build this city up again, for the rest of time, it will be like no-one even knew we was ever here.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: I killed the last honorable man, 15 years ago. Since then it's... You seen his portrait downstairs?
- Amsterdam Vallon: Mm-hmm.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: 'S your mouth all glued-up with cunny juice? I asked you a question!
- Amsterdam Vallon: [angrily] I said I *seen* it, sir.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: [smiling] Oh, you got a murderous rage in you! I like it. So much life boiling up in you. That's good!
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Is this it, Priest? The Pope's new army? A few crusty bitches and a handful of rag-tags?
- Priest Vallon: Now, now, Bill, you swore this was a battle between warriors, not a bunch of Miss Nancys. So warriors is what I brought.
- [more Irish gangs arrive]
- O'Connell Guard Leader: The O'Connell Guard!
- Plug Uglies Leader: The Plug Uglies!
- Shirt Tails Leader: The Shirt Tails!
- Chichesters Leader: The Chichesters!
- Forty Thieves Leader: The Forty Thieves!
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Bene.
- 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' Cutting: 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' Cutting: [gleefully] If only I had the guns, Mr. Tweed, I'd shoot each and every one of them before they set foot on American soil.
- Walter 'Monk' McGinn: [Pins Amsterdam to the wall] That's it, that's it! Tear my head off and destruct the world! Just like the rest of the stupid Irish in this country! That's why I never ran with your dad!
- Amsterdam Vallon: Get off me you crazy bastard!
- Walter 'Monk' McGinn: [Leans in and whispers a line of Gaelic. Then, in English] It means, 'If you're not strong you'd better be smart.' Now I don't know if you're being too clever or too dumb, but whichever it is just remember this much. For all his faults, your father was a man who loved his people.
- [Releases Amsterdam and walks away]
- Amsterdam Vallon: Lord, place the steel of the Holy Spirit in my spine and the love of the Virgin Mary in my heart.
- 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?
- Boss Tweed: That's the building of our country right there, Mr. Cutting. Americans aborning.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: I don't see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a nigger does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for. What have they done? Name one thing they've contributed.
- Boss Tweed: Votes.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Votes, you say? They vote how the archbishop tells them, and who tells the archbishop? Their king in the pointy hat what sits on his throne in Rome.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: A *real* native is someone who is willing to die fighting for his country. There's nothing more to it.
- [swearing in Irish immigrants as citizens at the harbor]
- Army Recruiter: That document makes you a citizen, and this one makes you a private in the Union army. Now get out there and serve your country.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: 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.
- Priest Vallon: Now, son, who's that?
- Young Amsterdam Vallon: Saint Michael.
- Priest Vallon: Who's that?
- Young Amsterdam Vallon: Saint Michael!
- Priest Vallon: And what did he do?
- Young Amsterdam Vallon: He cast Satan out of Paradise.
- Priest Vallon: Good boy!
- Amsterdam Vallon: The past is a torch that lights our way. Where our fathers have shown us the path, we shall follow. Our faith is the weapon most feared by our enemies. For thereby shall we lift our people up against those who would destroy us.
- Amsterdam Vallon: Suppose you back an Irish candidate, of my choosin', and I'll deliver all the Irish vote?
- Boss Tweed: That will only happen in the reign of Queen Dick.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Everything you see belongs to me, to one degree or another. The beggars and newsboys and quick thieves here in Paradise, the sailor dives and gin mills and blind tigers on the waterfront, the anglers and amusers, the she-hes and the Chinks. Everybody owes, everybody pays. Because that's how you stand up against the rising of the tide.
- Amsterdam Vallon: The earth turns, but we don't feel it more. And one night you look up. One spark and the whole sky is on fire.
- Amsterdam Vallon: Jenny was a Bluget, a girl pickpocket and a turtledove. A turtledove picks out a fine house, disguises herself as a housemaid and robs you blind. It takes a lot of sand to be a turtledove.
- [speaking of Bill the Butcher]
- Jenny: I was twelve years old, my mother was dead, and I was livin' in a doorway. He took me in. Took care of me, in his way. After they cut out the baby - well, he doesn't fancy girls that's scarred up. But you should know, in your own mind, that he never laid a hand on me until I asked him to.
- [as a man is about to be hung]
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: That's a fine locket. I'll give you a dollar for it.
- Arthur: It was me mother's...
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Dollar and a half?
- Arthur: Done.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: We hold in our hearts the memory of our fallen brothers whose blood stains the very streets we walk today. Also on this night we pay tribute to the leader of our enemies, an honorable man, who crossed over bravely, fighting for what he believed in. To defeat my enemy, I extinguish his life, and consume him as I consume these flames. In honor of Priest Vallon.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: He ain't earned a death! He ain't a death at my hands! No, he'll walk amongst you marked with shame, a freak worthy of Barnum's Museum of Wonders. God's only man, spared by the Butcher.
- [as Monk McGinn runs for Sheriff]
- Boss Tweed: That man was right born for this.
- Amsterdam Vallon: He's killed 44 men, and laid low a couple hundred more.
- Boss Tweed: Is that right? We should have run him for mayor.
- Boss Tweed: Bill, I can't get a days work done for all the good citizens coming in here to harass me about crime in the Points. Some even go so far as to accuse Tammany of connivance in this so-called rampant criminality. What am I to do? I can't have this. Something has to be done.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: What do you have in mind?
- Boss Tweed: I don't know. I think maybe we should hang someone.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Who?
- Boss Tweed: No one important, necessarily. Average men will do. Back alley amusers with no affiliations.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: How many?
- Boss Tweed: Three or four.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Which?
- Boss Tweed: Four.
- Jenny: [after running into Johnny] Look where you are going, Johnny!
- [notices Amsterdam]
- Jenny: You look stunned and poorly, sir.
- [both of the men are silent and nervous]
- Jenny: [sarcastic] Quite a pair of conversationists, aren't you.
- Amsterdam Vallon: Maybe not. We're deep thinkers.
- Jenny: [chuckles] Well then. Gentlemen, I leave you in the grace and favour of the Lord.
- [walks off]
- Amsterdam Vallon: I've been called a lot of things, mister... but I've never been called...?
- McGloin: Fiddeling bends.
- Amsterdam Vallon: Fiddeling bends. Right. If I knew what in the hell that meant... I might be inclined to take offense.
- Boss Tweed: You're a good one for the fighting, Bill. But you can't fight forever.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: I can go down doing it.
- Boss Tweed: And you will!
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: What did you say?
- Boss Tweed: I said, you're turning your back on the future.
- Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting: Not our future.