Daniel Day-Lewis credited as playing...
Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.