Monsieur Spade
Sundays 9:00 PM on AMCSam Spade Quotes
Virginia: I can’t imagine a man of your particular origins is all that upset about body count.
Sam: I supposed I’ve just never understood that whole thing about diplomacy at the end of a rifle.
Virginia: You’re really going to sit there and tell me that you have never had to be your worst in order to do your best?
Sam: I make decisions, and I live by them, for better or worse.
Virginia: One doesn’t go to bed one person and wake up another just because one says so.
Sam: You mean people are simpler than they think? I had no idea.
Virginia: And finally, Mr. Spade.
Sam: You have an interesting accent. What part of Canada are you from, exactly?
Virginia: The south.
Sam: I’m guessing somewhere below Niagara Falls.
Virginia: I would think a man of your experience would not have gotten within a hundred miles of such a rat fuck, not to mention turning the whole affair into such a mess.
Sam: Philippe made the mess. I just tried to clean it up.
Virginia: You pick up vomit with a teaspoon; you make a bigger mess.
Sam: What a swell metaphor.
Virginia: I read a lot of E.E. Cummings.
Virginia: A small constabulary in the ass end of a giant hole is no match for the big guns elsewhere. One phone call to anyone heavier would have ended the whole thing before it got this far.
Sam: A call to who? You? I don’t know who you are or who you work for, and we both know you’re about as Canadian as sweet potato pie, and you’re not here saving this kid out of a sudden spasm of altruism.
Virginia: No one wants another war, Spade, in Algeria or anywhere else.
Sam: Oh, so you’re just snatching him in the name of world peace.
Sam: You sound like a leaflet someone dropped from an airplane. I mean, you may not have noticed, but I do nothing but fight for the people in this odd place, and all the people who live around the true, including you two ignorant dimwits. And yeah, I have a swell life, or at least I did until you all fucked it up. I can’t even go for a swim in my pool anymore.
Anatol: How terrible for you, huh?
Sam: Yes, it is a fucking tragedy!
Gabrielle: You once told me that a life is an easy thing to walk away from.
Sam: Yeah, that’s just one of those fucking stories I tell. When are you leaving?
Henri: I’m not what you think I am, Monsieur Spade.
Sam: You’re exactly what I think you are. You’re a sap who has been sucked into Anatol’s OAS bullshit.
Anatol: I’m not OAS. I’m XO Forces.
Sam: Oh, Jesus. How many fuckin’ dogmatic maniacs can you have in one country?
Mr. Kahn: Do you know where the word sabotage comes from?
Sam: The dictionary.
Sam: However good a shot you think you are, you could have killed Teresa, and trust me, I don’t think you could’ve lived with that.
Henri: You don’t know what I could live with.
Sam: No, what I meant, Henri, is that I would have fucking killed you.
Oh, and Henri, for love of God, stop trying to protect us before you get us all killed.
Anatol: I love my country. I would die for my country.
Sam: Do you have to do all your loving and dying in Bozouls? Aren’t there plenty of your fellow patriots in Argentina that you can write angry manifestos and compare kill lists with? Leave me to enjoy my cognac and foul cheese in peace?
Virginia: And yet, sadly, our pasts are portable, and you find yourself continually drawn in to the lonely, troubled, the confused.
Sam: Otherwise known as the entire human race. But I’m not drawn to anybody. I’m just dubious about everybody.
Virginia: Common ground. At last!
