Mama - Struggles of Single Life Explored
Lucas: [[mom]
So, how's it been, life as a single ]?
Annabel: [[great]
It's ]!
Lucas:
Yeah?
Annabel: [''whispering''; [hate]
It's terrible; they ] me.
Lucas: [''whispering'']
They don't hate you.
Annabel:
They hate me.
Lucas:
They don't hate you.
Annabel: [[cool (aesthetic)|cool]
So easy for you to say. You're like the ] uncle.
Lucas:
I am the cool uncle. What? What is it, Annie?
Annabel: [[home; [clean up]
Just get well soon so you can come ] and ] their mess, please.
Lucas:
You sure that's it?
Annabel:
Yeah.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Assessing Certainty in Intelligence Operations
CIA Director:
I'm about to go look the President in the eye, and what I'd like to know, no fucking bullshit, is where everyone stands on this thing. Now, very simply, is he there, or is he not fucking there?
Deputy Director:
We all come at this through the filter of our own past experiences. I remember "Iraq WMD" very clearly, I fronted that, and I can tell you the case for that was much stronger than this case.
CIA Director:
A fuckin yes or a no.
Deputy Director:
We don't deal in certainty, we deal in probability. I'd say there's a sixty percent probability he's there.
The Wolf:
I concur. Sixty percent.
George: [[w:Operations security|OPSEC]
I'm at eighty percent. Their ] is what convinces me.
CIA Director:
You guys ever agree on anything?
Dan:
Well, I agree with sixty, we're basing this mostly on detainee reporting and I spent a bunch of time in those rooms. Who knows? I'd say it's a soft sixty, sir. I'm virtually certain there's some high value target there, I'm just not sure it's bin Laden.
CIA Director:
This is a cluster-fuck, isn't it?
Jeremy:
I'd like to know what Maya thinks...
Deputy Director:
We're all incorporating her assessment into ours...
Maya: [interrupting]
A hundred percent he's there. Okay, fine, ninety-five percent because I know how certainty freaks you guys out, but it's a hundred.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Briefing on Osama bin Laden's Location
General: [about stealth helicopters; [w:Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit|B2; [w:Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk|Black Hawk]
I actually tried to kill this program a couple of times. They've gone through an initial round of testing, and they have excellent radar defeat - we just haven't tested them with people in them yet. You'll notice these stealth panels, similar to what we use on the ]. The rotors have been muffled with decibel killers. It's slower than a ] and lacks the offense. But it can hide.
Justin: [[w:Muammar Gaddafi|Gaddafi]
Excuse me. Can I ask a question? What do we need this for in Libya? ]'s anti-air is virtually non-existent.
George: [[w:Counterterrorism Center|CTC; [w:Central Intelligence Agency|Agency]
Gentlemen, can I have your attention? My name is George, I run the Af-Pak division at ], and I'm primary on this for the ]. This is a title fifty operation. Some of us have worked together before. This is a good one. Maya, do you want to brief them?
Maya:
There are two narratives about the location of Osama bin Laden. The one that you're most familiar with is that UBL is hiding in a cave in the Tribal Areas, that he's surrounded by a large contingent of loyal fighters. But that narrative is pre-9/11 understanding of UBL. The second narrative is that he's living in a city. Living in a city with multiple points of egress and entry, and with access to communications so that he can keep in touch with the organization. You can't run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave. We have located an individual we believed, based on detainee reporting, is bin Laden's courier. He's living in a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. And we assess that one of the other occupants of the house is UBL.
Justin:
Excuse me. You got an intel source on the ground?
Maya:
No.
Justin:
No? Okay, so how do you know it's bin Laden? Cause the truth is, we've been on this op before, it was 07, and it wasn't bin Laden, and we lost a couple of guys.
Maya:
Totally understand, Bin Laden uses a courier to interact with the outside world. By locating the courier, we've located bin Laden.
Patrick:
That's really the intel? That's it?
Maya: [[w:Animal sentinels|canaries]
Quite frankly, I didn't even want to use you guys, with your dip and your velcro and all your gear bullshit. I wanted to drop a bomb. But people didn't believe in this lead enough to drop a bomb, so they're using you guys as ], on the theory that if bin Laden isn't there, you can sneak away and no one will be the wiser. But bin Laden is there, and you're going to kill him for me.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Focus on Immediate Threats Over Historical Leads
Maya:
I really need to talk to you about beefing up our surveillance operation on the caller.
Joseph: [[w:Times Square|Times Square]
We don't have a surveillance operation on the caller. Someone just tried to blow up ] and you're talking about some facilitator that some detainee said seven years ago might be working with al-Qaeda?
Maya:
He's the key to bin Laden.
Joseph:
I don't fucking care about bin Laden. I care about the next attack. You're gonna start working on the American al-Qaeda cells. Protect the homeland.
Maya:
Bin Laden is the one who keeps telling them to attack the homeland. If it wasn't for him, al-Qaeda would still be focused on overseas targets. If you really want to protect the homeland, you need to get bin Laden.
Joseph:
This guy never met bin Laden. This guy's a freelancer working on the fucking Internet. Nobody's even talk to bin Laden in four years. He's out of the game. He may well even be dead. He might as well be fucking dead, but you know what you're doing. You're chasing a ghost while the whole fucking network grows all around you.
Maya:
You just want me to nail some low-level Mullah-crack-a-dulla so you can check the box on your resume that says while you were in Pakistan you got a real terrorist. BUT THE TRUTH IS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND PAKISTAN & YOU DON'T KNOW AL-QAEDA! Either give me the team I NEED to follow this lead or the other thing you're gonna have on your resume is being the first station chief to be called before a Congressional Committee FOR SUBVERTING THE EFFORTS TO CAPTURE OR KILL Bin Laden.
Joseph: [pause]
You're fucking out of your mind.
Maya: [[w:Rawalpindi|Rawalpindi]
I need 4 techs and safe house in ] and 4 techs and safe house in Peshawar. Either send them out, or send me back to D.C and explain to the director why you didn't.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Questions Surrounding Bin Laden's Protection and Location
Steve: [in CIA conference room, where he and Maya are about to meet with the CIA Director and his Deputies]
They're gonna ask: "If bin Laden is at the end of this rainbow, is the Pak military with him?
Maya: [[w:Pervez Musharraf|Musharaf; CIA Director and his Deputies walk in]
The question isn't "Are the Paks protecting bin Laden?" The question is "Would he allow himself to be protected by the Paks?" I mean, why would he trust them? He tried to kill ].
CIA Director:
Go ahead.
Steve: [gesturing over a map of Pakistan; [w:Islamabad|Islamabad; [w:Abbottabad|Abbottabad]
If you take a right out of ] and drive about forty-five minutes north, you'll find yourself here, in ]. A middle class community, some ex-military, not particularly interesting to us. Except we did find this compound, which is unique. We got a sixteen foot wall around the entire perimeter, the windows are blacked out. It's a fortress.
CIA Director:
Can't you put a camera somewhere, in the trees, to get a look into the main house?
George:
It will probably be discovered.
CIA Director:
We have to get a look into the house. Alright, what's this? This cluster of buildings down here?
George: [[w:Pakistan Military Academy|Pakistan Military Academy; [w:West Point|West Point]
The PMA — the ]. It's their ].
CIA Director:
And how close is that to the house?
George:
About a mile.
Maya:
4,221 feet. It's close to eight-tenths of a mile.
CIA Director:
Who are you?
Maya:
I'm the motherfucker who found this place, sir.
CIA Director: [pause; pause; CIA Director and his Deputies leave, leaving only Maya and Steve in the room]
Really. I want to know more about who's inside this house by the end of the week.
Steve: [sarcastically]
Motherfucker?" Good.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Analyzing Suspicious Behavior in Communication
Larry:
This guy you're obsessed with, what's his name again?
Maya:
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti is the nom de guerre. His true name, we think, is Ibraheem Sayeed. His family lives in Kuwait.
Larry:
Wasn't it, like, eight brothers and a million cousins that we know about? Anyone could be calling home. It's not like he's saying "Hey mom, it's me, the terrorist.
Maya:
Over the course of two months he's called home from six different pay phones, from two different cities, never using the same phone twice. And when his mother asked him where he was, he lied. He said that he was in a place in the country with bad cell reception - implying he was in the Tribals - but he was in Peshawar. I'm sorry, but that's not normal guy behavior. That's tradecraft.
Larry:
Maybe he just doesn't like his mom? Look, if he talks about an operation, or refers to anything remotely fishy, I'll get on him, okay?
Maya:
No. Not okay. Look, Abu Ahmed is too smart to tip his hand by talking about ops on the phone: he works for bin Laden. The guys that talk about ops on the phone don't get that job. A lot of my friends have died trying to do this. I believe I was spared so I could finish the job.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Understanding and Negotiation in Intelligence Operations
Maya: [to Hassan Ghul]
I want you to understand that I know you. I have been following you for a long time. I chased you in Lahore. I had you picked up instead of killing you because you're not a violent man and you don't deserve to die.
Hassan Ghul:
Thank you.
Maya:
But you do have deep ties to al-Qaeda that I want to ask you about before you get sent to your next location, which might be Israel. However, depending on how candid you are today, I may be able to keep you in Pakistan.
Hassan Ghul:
What do you want to know?
Maya:
I'm going to ask you a series of questions based on your knowledge of al-Qaeda and your position as key financier for the organization.
Hassan Ghul: [[w:Mukhabarat|Mukhabarat]
I have dealt with the ], I have no wish to be tortured again. Ask me a question, I can answer it.
Maya: [[w:Atiyah Abd al-Rahman|Atiyah Abd al-Rahman]
What can you tell me about ].
Hassan Ghul: [[w:Ayman al-Zawahiri|Zawahiri]
He works for ]. He's in charge of military tactics.
Maya:
In what context have you heard the name Abu Ahmed?
Hassan Ghul:
He works for Faraj and bin Laden. He is his most trusted courier.
Maya:
What makes you say that?
Hassan Ghul:
He brought me many messages from the Sheikh.
Maya:
Where did you last see him, and where is he now?
Hassan Ghul:
You will never find him.
Maya:
Why is that?
Hassan Ghul:
Even I couldn't find him. He always contacted me out of the blue. He is one of the disappeared ones.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - The Uncertainty of Abu Ahmed's Identity
Joseph Bradley:
Well, that's good. You still don't...
Maya: [cutting him off]
Yeah, we don't know if Abu is on the outside of the network — part of a series of cutouts and dead drops — or if he has a direct connection to bin Laden. Does bin Laden invite him into the living room and hand him a letter directly? Or is Abu just the last guy in a long line of couriers, so that's why everybody knows him?
Joseph Bradley:
That's not all you don't know. You don't have his true name, and you don't have a clue where he is.
Maya:
We know that he's important. The fact that everybody's heard of Abu Ahmed but nobody will tell me where he is suggests that.
Joseph Bradley:
Maybe. Detainees could withhold his location for any number of reasons. Perhaps they don't know; perhaps this Abu is just a cover story and he's really a fucking unicorn. The withholding doesn't reveal what you want it to, does it?
Maya:
No.
Joseph Bradley:
And if you did find him, you don't know that he'd be with bin Laden.
Dan:
We don't know what we don't know.
Joseph Bradley:
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Dan: [[w:Tautology|tautology]
It's a ].
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Interrogation Insights and Unexpected Connections
Maya: [to Ammar, referencing the [[w:2004 Khobar massacre|2004 Khboar massacre]
After we kept you awake for 96 hours, you gave us names of some of your brothers and saved the lives of a lot of innocent people.
Dan:
Which is the smart thing to do, you're starting to think for yourself. Eat up! You earned it!
Dan:
So you flew via Amman to Kabul to hang out with your uncle? Mukhtar.
Amar:
How did you know that?
Dan: [[w:Peshawar|Pesh]
I told you man, I know you. Alright, you got me - flight manifests. It must've been pretty fucked up for you guys after 9/11. What did you do after the invasion and before you went back to ]?
Ammar:
After 9/11 we had to choose: fight, to protect our turf - or run.
Dan:
You chose to fight.
Ammar:
I wanted to kill Americans. We tried to get into Tora Bora, but the bombing was too high. We couldn't cross.
Maya:
Sorry, who is the "we" in that sentence?
Dan: [casually, but annoyed]
I can go eat with some other dude and hang you back up to the ceiling.
Ammar: [[w:Abu Hamza Rabia|Hamza Rabia; [w:Midhat Mursi|Khabab al-Masri; [w:Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti|Abu Ahmed]
], ], and ].
Maya:
Who's Abu Ahmed? I've heard of the other guys.
Ammar:
He was a computer guy with us at the time. After Tora Bora, I went back to Pesh - as you know - and he went North, I think, to Kunar.
Maya:
What's his family name?
Ammar:
Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti
Maya:
Abu Ahmed means father of Ahmed," it's a kunya. Ammar, I know the difference between a war name and an Arabic name.
Dan:
She got you there, dude.
Ammar:
I swear to you both: I don't know his family name. I would have never asked him something like that. It's not how my uncle worked. My uncle told me he worked for bin Laden. I did see him, once, about a year ago, in Karachi. He read us all a letter from the Sheikh.
Maya:
A letter?
Dan:
What did it say?
Ammar:
It said: "Continue the jihad. The work will go on for a hundred years.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Assessment of Security Patterns in Afghanistan
Jessica:
A farmer on the Afghan border near Tora Bora reports a diamond shaped pattern in the hills, tall male in the center of the diamond, flanked by four guards. It's consistent with UBL's movements.
Jeremy:
That's supposed to be his Royal Guard?
Maya:
That's pre-9/11 behavior.
Jessica: [irritated]
We don't have any reason to believe he's changed security tactics.
Maya:
We invaded Afghanistan. That's a reason.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Determination in the Pursuit of Justice
Maya: [[w:SEAL Team Six|DEVGRU; [w:United States Navy SEALs|SEAL team]
* To members of the ] ].
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Frustration with Unnecessary Equipment and Procedures
Maya:
Quite frankly, I didn't even want to use you guys, with your dip and your Velcro and all your gear bullshit.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Limitations of remote operations in warfare
Maya:
You can't run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Determined Search for the Sayeed Family's Contact
Maya:
Move heaven and earth and bring me this fucking Sayeed Family's phone number.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Zero Dark Thirty - Determined Resolve in Pursuit of Justice
Maya: [[Osama bin Laden]
I'm going to smoke everyone involved in this op and then I'm going to kill ].
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Dark Phoenix - Communication Challenges Amidst Chaos
Vuk:
This truly is an unfortunate development.
John Grey:
Why-- Why is that?
Vuk:
It's so much easier to understand your language when you're not screaming.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - Court Disagrees with Government's Sentencing Recommendation
Judge Foxman:
Based on all available information, this court manifestly disagrees with the government’s sentencing recommendation. This courthouse is located within spitting distance of Wall Street. I know this from my personal experience trying to spit at it. The men and women who work there will commit more serious crimes by lunchtime today than the defendant has committed in this indictment. I simply don’t see how either the People or the cause of justice are served by locking Molly Bloom in prison.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
It was as casual as if he was ordering lunch off a menu.
Judge Foxman:
Ms. Bloom, this court sentences you to two-hundred hours of community service, one year of supervised probation and drug testing and a one-hundred thousand dollar fine. This case is adjourned.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - Misunderstanding Leads to Legal Complications
Harrison Wellstone:
In Mike Davidoff's phone, intercepts alone, just Davidoff, your name comes up 19 times! "We need Molly..." "Get Molly..." "Bring Molly." It strongly suggests you were important to his business, so it's hard for me to believe that someone with your savvy and obvious intellect...
Molly Bloom: [interrupting him]
They're talking about the drug. "Get molly" "Bring molly" "We need molly" It's... they're talking about the drug ecstasy'.
Charlie Jaffey: [pause]
Shit. My office was next to yours for two years and I saw you make some bone-headed moves but I’ve never seen any prosecutor step in it the way you just did. You should thank all of the gods that there’s no physical record of that exchange.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - Clarifying Misconceptions About Women's Roles
Harrison Wellstone: [in a deposition]
Were the women who worked for you call girls?
Molly Bloom:
No sir.
Brennan:
They never exchanged sex for money?
Molly Bloom:
No.
Harrison Wellstone:
Have you ever exchanged sex for money?
Charlie Jaffey: [interrupting them]
No!
Molly Bloom:
I think he was talking to me.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Cost of Losing Identity and Control
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
The game had given me an identity, respect, and a defined place in a world that was inaccessible and in one irrational heartbeat it was taken away. I was irrelevant and forgotten overnight. It’d been two weeks since I lost the game and I made an appointment to see someone because now the humiliation and depression had given way to a blinding anger at my powerlessness over the unfair whims of men who had leverage over me and I wanted to talk it out with someone. That was it, that’s what was making me angry. It was that there weren’t any rules. These power moves weren’t framed by right and wrong, just ego and vanity. Selfish whims with no regard to consequence. No fairness, no justice. And that giggling, cackling call from Player X...
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
I couldn’t lose to that greenscreened little shit and I didn’t want a therapist to make me feel okay about it. You know what makes you feel okay about losing? Winning.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - Recognizing a Losing Streak in Poker
Molly Bloom:
You're on tilt—everybody knows it. You're playing without the weapons you need to win.
Harlan Eustice: [nods]
You're right.
Molly Bloom: [nods]
Alright. Thank you.
Harlan Eustice:
Give me five hundred thousand. I just got to get back to even.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over; Harlan returns to the table with fresh chips]
That should be the second line of every gambler’s obit. “Mr. Feldstein died while trying to get back to even.” Harlan never did. And he never got to his wife’s birthday party. She filed for divorce two days later. But there was one last punch coming that would put Harlan on the floor for good. Harlan was heads-up against a guy named Frederick who was Austrian royalty.
Harlan Eustice: [pushes a few stacks of chips towards the center of the table]
Call.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
Harlan had pocket queens. His Excellency had Ace-King. They were both in 65K pre-flop. The flop's queen-seven-seven. Harlan has a full-house again, queens full of sevens, with three rounds of betting in front of him. The Count has nothing.
Frederick: [puts his hand up]
All in.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
And the Count goes all in. He wants Harlan to think he’s got two more sevens under there.
Harlan Eustice: [turns his cards face up and pushes his remaining chips towards the center of the table]
Call.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over; Diego burns another card and deals the last turn: a King of Clubs]
Nope, says Harlan. He’s not falling for this again and he snap calls all in. There’s $750,000 on the table. Diego burns a card and deals the turn. A king. Otto von Bismarck now has two-pair, kings and sevens, but two-pair’s nothing next to a full house. And at this point, the only hand left that can beat a queen full house...'...is a king full house.
Frederick: [smiles]
Alright.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
Captain von Trapp bluffed two-pair and rivered into kings full.
Harlan Eustice: [shakes his head, stunned; grabs some food that’s on a plate and throws it at Diego]
Motherfucker. MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING MECHANIC!
Molly Bloom:
Hey!
Harlan Eustice:
FUCK YOU, YOU BOTTOM-DEALIN PARTY MAGICIAN!
Molly Bloom: [ushers Harlan away from the table]
Hey, get out onto the terrace.
Harlan Eustice:
You've been pulling this shit on me for two days!
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - High Stakes in a Poker Game
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
Harlan's got a boat, nines full. Brad's got nothing, but his pre-flop betting made it look, entirely accidentally, like there was a chance he had pocket kings.
Harlan Eustice: [pushes a few stacks of chips towards the center of the table]
Twenty thousand.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
Which, if true, would give him the better full house. Brad's counting off twenty thousand, which means he's gonna call, and Harlan knows that if Brad's gonna call and not raise, it means he didn't have the boat, and he's betting a high two-pair, probably kings and queens. But then, instead of calling the bet, Brad pushes seventy-two thousand dollars into the pot.
Brad Marion: [pushes all of his chips towards the center of the table, Harlan frowns]
I'm all in.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
Harlan looks at Brad. Every tell Harlan knows about—carotid artery pumping, stiff hands—Brad’s doing the opposite. Brad's bet had represented a huge hand by calling on the flop, check-raising the turn and bombing the river. Of course Harlan didn’t know that Brad didn’t know what any of that meant. So Harlan, always a good sport, said:
Harlan Eustice: [smiles; tosses in his cards]
Nice bet. I'm laying this down.
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
As he tossed in what he didn’t realize was the winning hand. Brad tosses in his cards too and one of them flips over and Harlan sees:
Harlan Eustice: [frowns]
You didn't have pocket kings?
Brad Marion: [smiles]
I didn't have any kings, except the one in the middle.
Harlan Eustice:
You had two-pair?
Brad Marion:
I had one-pair, the nines in the middle.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Dark Side of Poker Motivation
Player X:
You know, I don't like playing poker.
Molly Bloom:
Why do you play?
Player X:
I like destroying lives.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Dynamics of High-Stakes Poker Games
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
I’d overheard stories about games that folded after one bad night and I needed this one to keep going and I needed to bring value to it. I knew if I wanted to cement my place there was one guy I needed to team up with and that was this man. The game had regulars and the game had guests and four of the regulars were famous actors and I’m going to call one of them Player X. Player X subscribed to the belief that money won was twice as good as money earned. He lived to beat people and take their money. Here’s Player X talking one of the guests into folding the winning hand.
Player X:
I swear on my--look at me--I swear on my mother’s life--I have you.
Molly Bloom:
Player X was the best player at the table and tonight this guy was the worst. He’s staring at his cards - even a reasonably good amateur would know it was mathematically the best hand, which in poker is called the nuts. There was forty seven thousand dollars in the pot and the guest was holding the nuts but he was starting to get confused because a movie star was talking to him.
Player X:
My mother’s life man, I’m not messing with you.
Guest:
Why would you be telling me?
Player X:
Either I am messing with you or you’re new to the game, you’ve had bad cards all night, you should’ve folded after the flop and I don’t want to win more of your money this way. I’ve got queens under here. Take your time.
Guest:
Fold.
Player X:
Fuck you!
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
A fish is a particular kind of player. A fish has money. A fish plays loose and doesn’t fold a lot. A fish is good but not too good. The Viper Room may have belonged to Reardon but the game belonged to Player X. People wanted to say they played with him the same way they wanted to say they rode on Air Force One. My job security was gonna depend on bringing him his fish. But where would I find people with a lot of money who didn’t know how to spend it and liked to be around celebrities?
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - Career Choices Driven by Personal Circumstances
Molly Bloom:
Why did you leave the prosecutor’s office and become a defense attorney?
Charlie Jaffey:
My daughter.
Molly Bloom:
You needed to make money.
Charlie Jaffey:
That and I was usually one of the few people who knew where witnesses were being hidden.
Molly Bloom:
It was dangerous.
Charlie Jaffey:
Mm-hm.
Molly Bloom:
So you didn’t leave the prosecutor’s office because you wanted to stand up for the innocent and believe everyone’s entitled to the best defense?
Charlie Jaffey:
Not really.
Molly Bloom: [[w:Spencer Tracy|Spencer Tracy; pause]
It would have been helpful if you were ] or... I didn’t know who the Russians were. I can get you the two-hundred and fifty-thousand, I left ten times that on the street, it’ll just take some time.
Charlie Jaffey:
We do pro bono work - we regularly lend out our best litigators like me to the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, veterans groups - but I don’t think I can convince my partners to take a flyer on the Poker Princess.
Molly Bloom:
I didn’t name myself the Poker Princess.
Charlie Jaffey:
“Molly Bloom, the self-proclaimed Poker Princess...”
Molly Bloom:
That’s Us Weekly? I agree it would be unusual for them to print something that wasn’t true but it’s not true and if you think a princess could do what I did you’re incorrect. I’m getting that you don’t think much of me but what if every one of your ill informed, unsophisticated opinions about me were wrong?
Charlie Jaffey:
I’d be amazed.
Molly Bloom:
Yeah you know what, bud? You would.
Charlie Jaffey:
You don’t need me, you need a publicist.
Molly Bloom:
No, I need a fuckin’ lawyer!
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Importance of Identity and Legacy
Molly Bloom:
Because it's all I have left! Because it's my name... and I'll never have another.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Illusion of Control and Consequences
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
When I lost the LA game I told myself it was no big deal. It was just supposed to be an adventure and a way to meet influential people. And I’d saved over two hundred thousand dollars. But that was just a weak firewall I’d hastily built to keep out the humiliation and depression I knew was coming. It had to end sometime, I just thought it would be on my time. I didn’t think it was gonna be taken away from me. And for such a stomach-turning reason.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - Harlan's Risky Poker Strategy at Dawn
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
By 5 a.m., Harlan was down half a million. He'd abandoned everything he knew about poker and was playing like a frat kid, swinging for a home run on every hand.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Risks of Underestimating an Opponent
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
By midnight, Harlan had tripled his original fifty-thousand dollar buy-in. But everything came off the rails with one hand. And that’s how it happens, that’s how you go full tilt. Harlan, the best player at the table, the best player at most tables, was about to get bluffed off the win by, of all people...Bad Brad. How? Because Harlan had never played with Brad before, and didn't know yet that Brad was bad.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Essence of Competition and Exclusivity
Molly Bloom: [voiceover]
My game had a tricky ecosystem. It was built around escapism and exclusivity. These guys could buy their way into anything and anyone but here in this room you couldn’t buy your win. You couldn’t buy me, you couldn’t buy the girls and you couldn’t buy a seat at the table. There’s nothing as sweet as a win you have to work for and the wins and losses were compelling and they were real. Of course it helped that the players were gambling addicts.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Burden of Comparison and Competition
Molly Bloom: [voice-over; [wikipedia:Mack Robinson (athlete)|Matthew Robinson; [Jesse Owens; [Jackie Robinson|Jackie]
There was a track star from Pasadena in the 1930s named ]. Matthew Robinson shattered the Olympic record in the two-hundred at the Berlin Games in 1936. Absolutely shattered the Olympic record...and came in second. The man who came in first was ]. Owens went on to be a legend. Matthew Robinson went on to be a janitor at a whites-only school in Pasadena. The difference was two-hundreths of a second. As if that wasn’t enough, Matthew Robinson had a little brother who was also an athlete. His name was Jack but everyone called him ]. I have two younger brothers who were also overachievers. While I was ranked 3rd in North America, my brother Jeremy was Number 1 in the world. And while I was placing into A.P. Chemistry as a junior, my brother Jordan was doing it when he was 12-years-old or something, I don’t know. I was a hotshot student and a hotshot skier everywhere but my own house. And that’s where we live. As I got older I began to bait my father into fights without really knowing why I was doing it.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Pursuit of Winning Above All
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
People have asked me what my goal was at that point, what was my endgame. Back then I would have laughed at that question. I was raised to be a champion, my goal was to win. At what and against whom? Those were just details.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Power of Listening in Diverse Fields
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
Poker was my Trojan horse into the highest levels of finance, technology, politics, art, entertainment - all I had to do was listen.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - Understanding Risk and Precision in Sports
Molly Bloom: [voice-over; her ski comes off in the air]
Now two things you need to know before the second trick. which’ll be a 720. The first is that when visibility is bad the way it is now, race officials jam pine boughs in the snow at the edge of the jump so the skiers have some foreground depth reference. The second is that the tightness of your bindings is determined by what’s called a DIN setting. If you’re a beginner your DIN setting is probably 2 or 3. If you’re an experienced weekend skier it’s probably 7 or 8. Mine’s 15. My boots are basically welded to my skis. Right...so how does this happen? It happened because I hit a pine bough and I hit it so precisely that it simply snapped the release on my bindings. Right in that moment I didn’t have time to calculate the odds of that happening because I was about to land pretty hard on my digitally remastered spinal cord which is being held together by spare parts from an Erector Set. None of this has anything to do with poker. I’m only mentioning it because I wanted to say to whoever answered that the worst thing that could happen in sports was 4th place at the Olympics - seriously, fuck you.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Molly's Game - The Perception of Failure in Sports
Molly Bloom: [voice-over]
A survey was taken a few years ago that asked 300 professionals one question, "What's the worst thing that can happen in sports?" Some people answered losing a game 7, and other people said getting swept in the 4. Some people said it was missing the world cup, and some Brazilians said it was losing to Argentina. Not just in the world cup. Anytime, ever in any contest. But one person answered that the worst thing that can happen in sports is 4th place at the Olympics.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
The Martian - Trust in Unconventional Situations
Melissa Lewis:
You're in Martinez's hands now.
Mark Watney:
Well... tell that asshole no barrel rolls.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
The Martian - Teamwork and Discovery on Mars Mission
Melissa Lewis:
All right team, stay in sight of each other. Let's make NASA proud today.
Rick Martinez:
How's it looking over there, Watney?
Mark Watney:
Well, you will be happy to hear that in Grid Section 14-28, the particles were predominately coarse but in 29, they're much finer and they should be ideal for chem analysis.
Rick Martinez: [laughs]
Oh, wow. Did everybody hear that? Mark just discovered dirt. Should we alert the media?
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.