Jessica Chastain Quotes

Maya You can't run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave.

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.

Maya I'm going to smoke everyone involved in this op and then I'm going to kill ].

Player X You know, I don't like playing poker.

Molly Bloom Why do you play?

Player X I like destroying lives.

Molly Bloom 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.

Molly Bloom 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.

Molly Bloom Poker was my Trojan horse into the highest levels of finance, technology, politics, art, entertainment - all I had to do was listen.

Maya * To members of the ] ].

Maya I really need to talk to you about beefing up our surveillance operation on the caller.

Joseph 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 You're fucking out of your mind.

Maya 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.

Joseph Bradley Well, that's good. You still don't...

Maya 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 It's a ].

Maya Move heaven and earth and bring me this fucking Sayeed Family's phone number.

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 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.

Molly Bloom 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.

Molly Bloom 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.

Maya 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 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 I can go eat with some other dude and hang you back up to the ceiling.

Ammar ], ], 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.

Steve They're gonna ask: "If bin Laden is at the end of this rainbow, is the Pak military with him?

Maya 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 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 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 Really. I want to know more about who's inside this house by the end of the week.

Steve Motherfucker?" Good.

Molly Bloom 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.

Molly Bloom Because it's all I have left! Because it's my name... and I'll never have another.

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 We don't have any reason to believe he's changed security tactics.

Maya We invaded Afghanistan. That's a reason.

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 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 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.

Molly Bloom 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 Twenty thousand.

Molly Bloom 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 I'm all in.

Molly Bloom 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 Nice bet. I'm laying this down.

Molly Bloom 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 You didn't have pocket kings?

Brad Marion 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.

Melissa Lewis You're in Martinez's hands now.

Mark Watney Well... tell that asshole no barrel rolls.

Molly Bloom 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.

Maya Quite frankly, I didn't even want to use you guys, with your dip and your Velcro and all your gear bullshit.

Harrison Wellstone 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 No!

Molly Bloom I think he was talking to me.

General 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 Excuse me. Can I ask a question? What do we need this for in Libya? ]'s anti-air is virtually non-existent.

George 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 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.

Molly Bloom 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.

Lucas   So, how's it been, life as a single ]?

Annabel   It's ]!

Lucas   Yeah?

Annabel     It's terrible; they ] me.

Lucas     They don't hate you.

Annabel   They hate me.

Lucas   They don't hate you.

Annabel   So easy for you to say.  You're like the ] uncle.

Lucas   I am the cool uncle. What?  What is it, Annie?

Annabel   Just get well soon so you can come ] and ] their mess, please.

Lucas   You sure that's it?

Annabel   Yeah.

Molly Bloom You're on tilt—everybody knows it. You're playing without the weapons you need to win.

Harlan Eustice You're right.

Molly Bloom Alright. Thank you.

Harlan Eustice Give me five hundred thousand. I just got to get back to even.

Molly Bloom 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 Call.

Molly Bloom 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 All in.

Molly Bloom And the Count goes all in. He wants Harlan to think he’s got two more sevens under there.

Harlan Eustice Call.

Molly Bloom 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 Alright.

Molly Bloom Captain von Trapp bluffed two-pair and rivered into kings full.

Harlan Eustice Motherfucker. MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING MECHANIC!

Molly Bloom Hey!

Harlan Eustice FUCK YOU, YOU BOTTOM-DEALIN PARTY MAGICIAN!

Molly Bloom Hey, get out onto the terrace.

Harlan Eustice You've been pulling this shit on me for two days!

Molly Bloom 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.

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.

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 Oh, wow. Did everybody hear that? Mark just discovered dirt. Should we alert the media?

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 They're talking about the drug. "Get molly" "Bring molly" "We need molly" It's... they're talking about the drug ecstasy'.

Charlie Jaffey 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.

Molly Bloom 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 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?

Molly Bloom 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 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.

Maya 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 I have dealt with the ], I have no wish to be tortured again. Ask me a question, I can answer it.

Maya What can you tell me about ].

Hassan Ghul 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.

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 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!