- [breaking the fourth wall]
- Blackie: Frank is one of those guys who always believed that old lie, "You can't go home again." Fact is, it's probably the last place in the whole wide world he wanted to be. Heyyy, maybe that's why we're here.
- Fay Peronivic: [frustrated with Blackie's nonchalance during a crisis] Tell me something, when you were little, did you used to pull the wings off bugs?
- Blackie: When I was little I used to pull the wings off pterodactyls.
- [after dealing off the bottom of the deck to beat a twelve-year-old boy at blackjack]
- Fay Peronivic: Blackie, do you have any shame?
- Blackie: Oh, I guess not. I consider it part of my charm.
- Frank Nolan: Come on, Iron Man. I knew you when you had bad skin, so don't cop this attitude with me, okay?.
- Thomas: You think it's easy to see your own son like that? Do you think I got out of there just so I could cut loose? I got out of there because I couldn't bear to see him that way, Frank! I couldn't. It was...
- Frank Nolan: No one promised that it was going to be easy, Thomas. Sometimes it's just pain. Sometimes that's what you gotta go through. You ought to know that.
- Thomas: You changed, man. You used to be this farmboy goof-off. What happened to you?
- Frank Nolan: I came home.
- [breaking the fourth wall]
- Blackie: Yeah, Frank changed all right. He found out it could all end just like that. That's the time you got to ask yourself the question, "Do I have anything to show for it?" I think Thomas is about to ask himself the same question and he's going to need all the strength he has to handle the answer.
- [last lines]
- Frank Nolan: [speaking at his father's grave] It was a good thing you did, Dad. I wish I'd known you better.