- Jack Taylor: How come, no matter how long since you've seen the family, nor how much distance you've put between you, they can always push your buttons? Answer: because they installed them.
- Passerby: Ah Jack, I know your father; Paddy, Paddy Taylor, man of subtlety and taste, is he not?
- Jack Taylor: He had his moments.
- Passerby: One deduces, from the use of the past tense, that he is no longer with us.
- [pause]
- Passerby: Or worse, in England.
- Father Malachy: You still drinking?
- Jack Taylor: You're still smoking.
- Father Malachy: Me and Bette Davis.
- Jack Taylor: She's dead.
- Father Malachy: My point exactly.
- Father Malachy: [meeting Jack at a road intersection] Ah, Jack! Great news, I gave up smoking.
- Jack Taylor: And I gave up drinking.
- [they move along in opposite directions, Father Malachy takes another pull at his cigarette]
- Jack Taylor: To be a Finder requires patience and pig-stubbornness. The latter is my strongest point.
- Jack Taylor: [having pulled over a government car] Get out!
- Minister's Driver: [rolling down his window] Have you any idea who you are talking to?
- Jack Taylor: Yeah, you're the gobshite that screwed the nurses.
- Minister's Driver: [gets out of the car] Brazen pup! I'll have your job. You know what's going to happen now?
- Jack Taylor: Yeah. I know exactly what's gonna happen now.
- [punches him right in the face]
- Mrs. Taylor: You'll come to nothing, like your father.
- Jack Taylor: With that vote of confidence, Ma, it's no wonder I drink.
- Jack Taylor: [narrating] In reality, time doesn't pass, we pass. I think that's one of the saddest things I ever learned. And God knows, anything I have learned has been the hard way.
- Jack Taylor: [accepting a job] I can't promise anything.
- Anne Hennessy: Why are you a drunk?
- Jack Taylor: Why do you want a drunk to help you?
- Anne Hennessy: They say you're good because you've nothing else in your life.