- Alan Mann: Look, if he comes to me for your ass, I'm going to have to give it to him. Then you'll just be a hole, with no ass around it.
- [first lines]
- Dr. Roger Waters: [examining Beechum] Blood pressure: 120 over 70. Normal. All right, open wide. Looks fine. Healthy as a horse. Just one more thing, Luther.
- Warden Luther Plunkitt: You got to whiz in the cup, Frank. Then we're done.
- Alan Mann: Issues are shit we use as an excuse to run good stories. "Judge Grabs Female Attorney's Tits. "The sex discrimination "issue." "Nine-year-old Shoots Brother With Uzi." The child violence "issue." People want to read about sex organs and blood.
- Henry Lowenstein: Well, speak of the devil! Alan tells me I'm paying you too much.
- Steve Everett: You can rest assured I'm frittering it away on women and booze.
- Henry Lowenstein: You're a real dyed-in-the-wool son of a bitch. Anybody ever tell you that?
- Steve Everett: Just close friends and family.
- Frank Louis Beechum: [to his little girl before his execution] You're a big girl now. You know what's going on here, don't you? Now, you know, after today you won't see Daddy no more. But I will be there in spirit. I promise. You can talk to me whenever you want, all right? Remember what we talked about, the little baby Jesus? Remember that? Well, I will be up there with Him. And I will be watching you. And I'll wait for you. And if you want to talk to me anytime, I will be there listening.
- Steve Everett: Mister Beachum... Frankly I don't give a rat's ass about Jesus Christ and I don't care about justice in this world, or the next.
- Alan Mann: [to Steve] No, I don't have to listen to you! I'm looking at you, I'm looking and I can see a reporter who's about to tell me he has a HUNCH! Do you want an opinion about reporters who have hunches?
- Bridget Rossiter: Want coffee, Ev? It's back in fashion as a late-morning pick-me-up.
- Steve Everett: Make it a big one.
- Bridget Rossiter: Women can fetch coffee now because job opportunities give us new confidence.
- Bridget Rossiter: More and more workers insist on the right not to breathe secondhand smoke.
- Steve Everett: And more and more scumbags don't care. Well, Bridget, you're an adorable person.
- Bridget Rossiter: Sexual harassment.
- Steve Everett: What are the guidelines?
- Bridget Rossiter: Who can say? I hate my job, Ev.
- Steve Everett: But I love watching you do it.
- Steve Everett: I'm writing a human-interest sidebar. Do you know what that is?
- Counter Woman at Pocum's Grocery: No, I don't think I do.
- Steve Everett: I don't think I do either.
- Prison Guard: They lie, you know?
- Steve Everett: Who's that?
- Prison Guard: Prisoners. That's what they do. Every word they say is a lie.
- Steve Everett: Well, everyone lies, pal. I'm just here to write it down.
- Steve Everett: [driving to the Governor's mansion, to try and get a last-minute reprieve for a condemned man] We go fast!
- Warden Luther Plunkitt: These things go through all kind of trials and appeals before they get to us. No use trying to figure out who's naughty or nice and then come sliding down the chimney like a hero. Not on execution day. You're not Santa Claus. No such thing as Santa Claus.