- [after Beecher moves into Schillinger's pod]
- Vernon Schillinger: You're not a Jew, are you?
- Tobias Beecher: Me? Jewish? I don't even like Barbra Streisand.
- Vernon Schillinger: You like my tattoos?
- Tobias Beecher: Yeah.
- Vernon Schillinger: We're gonna have to get you one.
- Tobias Beecher: [laughs] I don't think so.
- Vernon Schillinger: Oh, yeah, I'm gonna brand you myself.
- Tobias Beecher: Livestock gets branded.
- Vernon Schillinger: [chuckles] Livestock. Yeah, that's exactly what you are, my livestock. Because now, Tobias. Your ass belongs to me.
- Joey D'Angelo: He ate his mother.
- Prisoner #95S604 Nino Schibetta: Get out of here.
- Joey D'Angelo: So I heard. He killed her, then he blew off her head, smothered it in onions.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: What, no garlic?
- Joey D'Angelo: He had his father in the freezer.
- Prisoner #95S604 Nino Schibetta: Sick fuck. What the fuck's wrong with this country? In the old days, murder was murder. You killed someone, it was business. You sure as Christ didn't eat them.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: Times have changed, Nino.
- Prisoner #95S604 Nino Schibetta: Fuck that. Times changed. Nothing changes. Nothing ever changes.
- Officer Joseph Mineo: Count!
- Tobias Beecher: What now?
- Robert Rebadow: We go to our cells, they count heads and lock us up for the night.
- Tobias Beecher: It's 5:00! What am I supposed to do... What time is lights out?
- Robert Rebadow: 10:00 PM.
- Tobias Beecher: What do I do for five hours?
- Robert Rebadow: Try to keep breathing.
- Tim McManus: In Em City we treat each other the way that we would like to be treated. We treat each other with respect.
- Kareem Said: And what happens when one of us does not respect the other?
- Tim McManus: There's violence.
- Kareem Said: Then prison life isn't all that different from the outside world.
- Tim McManus: Your celebrity status doesn't buy you any extra advantages here. All my prisoners are equal.
- Kareem Said: How ironic. To finally be an equal in a place where I do not have the freedom to enjoy it.
- Augustus Hill: Greaseball, cracker, mick, spic, kike, gook, nigger. Words. Words are weapons. I'd rather have a Mach 10 anytime. Some inmates say that violence is the worst thing we gotta face. For me, the worst thing is the great yawn. How do you fill day after dull ass day? We got these routines that are supposed to give our lives order and meaning. But I'm here to testify that I'm less afraid of getting shanked in my back than the routine. Cause the routine, man, the routine'll kill you.
- [last lines]
- Augustus Hill: People kill to stay alive. That's as true in prison as out. I wonder why in here we fight so hard to stay alive. A man gets sentenced to 100 years, he really thinks if he exercises, gets all buff, stays diesel, he's gonna walk out? A judge says life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Without the possibility. Lifers. At some point they realize they ain't going nowhere. I seen it happen. A calm comes in their eyes. It's like they figured out something that the rest of us are never gonna see. They're suddenly free in a whole other kinda way, they're ready to die. And maybe they do what they can to help that shit along.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: You're not afraid to take a punch, huh?
- Kareem Said: No, I'm not.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: You know all the answers too, huh?
- Kareem Said: Not all, some.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: Well, too bad you're the wrong color.
- Mike Healy: Your brother's a fag, Keany. They say it runs in the family. You a faggot too?
- Jefferson Keane: I don't know, why don't you suck my dick and find out.
- Augustus Hill: Oz is where I live. Oz is where I will die, where most of us will die. What we were don't matter. What we are don't matter. What we become don't matter. Does it?
- [first lines]
- Augustus Hill: Oz. That's the name on the street for the Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary. Oz is retro. Oz is retribution. You wanna punish a man? Separate him from his family, separate him from himself, cage him up with his own kind.
- Tim McManus: A new inmate comes in, we sit on him, send him back out, he's back with a vengeance. If we don't do something different, we don't do something radical, right now, we're never gonna break the chain.
- Augustus Hill: In Oz, the guards lock the cages and walk away and the predators rise, take control, and make the rules. In Em City, the guards are with us 24 hours a day. There's no privacy. Everybody sees what everybody's doing. Eyes everywhere. McManus' eyes. See, in Em City, retribution gives way to redemption. Timmy boy believes he can save every one of us, from each other, from ourselves, from the system that dumped us in here. Only thing he don't get is, you gotta want to be saved.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: Hey, let me give you a slice of advice. Get yourself a weapon. Anyone tries to fuck with you, take 'em down.
- Augustus Hill: What'd you do on the outside?
- Tobias Beecher: I was a lawyer.
- Augustus Hill: I hate lawyers almost as much as I hate cops.
- Mike Healy: Fucking McManus is out of fucking control. He tells me yesterday he's thinking of starting a quiet time. You ready for that? An hour every day the cons gotta sit in silence. I mean, what's next? Milk and cookies? Arts and crafts?
- Tim McManus: Maybe you should've listened to what I was saying, Healy. We gotta make 'em be quiet in here, because when they get out and get a job, they're gonna have to sit and do their work and be quiet.
- Mike Healy: Oh, come on, man. What kind of fairy dust have you been snorting? These stupid fucks aren't gonna go work for fucking Microsoft.
- Tim McManus: Bullshit. If an inmate survives Oz, he's got balls on the street. I wanna take some of the glamor away from that. I wanna take some of the glory away from that. Maybe a high school education, maybe to learn to fucking read.
- Kareem Said: 78% of the population at Oswald State Penitentiary are men of color. The ratio is, at last count, one officer for every nine prisoners. We can take this prison anytime we want to.
- Warden Leo Glynn: You can take it, but you wouldn't be able to keep it.
- Kareem Said: That remains to be seen.
- Warden Leo Glynn: Are you telling me you intend to start a riot?
- Kareem Said: What I'm telling you is, as of today, I run Oz.
- Warden Leo Glynn: Don't you fuck with me, my brother.
- Tim McManus: Dino, do you know why in Em City I put lifers in with all the rest? So that people can learn to live together. And not just for when they get released. Even if you're in here for the rest of your life, even if you're here until you die, your life can have some purpose.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: [talking to a cockroach in a jar] Hey, you hear that?
- [turns to McManus]
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: Are you on drugs, McManus? If you're not, you should start.
- Prisoner #95S604 Nino Schibetta: [to Dino] You gotta learn to behave. Wiseguys been running these joints for generations. How? With this,
- [Grabs his crotch]
- Prisoner #95S604 Nino Schibetta: and this.
- [Touches Ortolani's forehead]
- Prisoner #95S604 Nino Schibetta: We run the racket same as on the street, but you, you're gonna kill O'Reily, you're gonna kill the faggot. You gotta learn to think before you act. Life ain't an icepick. So go play nursemaid for a while. Go wipe some asses.
- Prisoner #96C382 Dino Ortolani: You think by shoving me in the AIDS ward you're gonna change me? Huh? Let me tell you something, coach. Even with all your good intentions, all your reforms, and all your overall policies, I ain't ever gonna change. We ain't ever gonna change. None of us.
- Johnny Post: This whole fucking place is bad for your health, you know what I'm saying? So the state bans cigs in prisons. I'm 30 years without a fucking cigarette? No fucking way. They don't even let the brothers in solitary smoke, like they're worried about catching fucking lung cancer.
- Sister Peter Marie Reimondo: Oh, Tim, you wanna be careful.
- Tim McManus: About what?
- Sister Peter Marie Reimondo: Of playing God once too often. If you're not careful, the real one's gonna get very pissed off.