- Steve Jackson: You see what I saw?
- Wardell Franklin: Yes, I saw what you saw, and don't be worrying about nothin' 'cause the dude mess with me, I'm gonna knock him out.
- Steve Jackson: You had the biggest butt I ever saw.
- Sarah Jackson: Steve, if you don't stop...
- Steve Jackson: But it's the truth. Good-looking behind. Said to myseIf when I first saw it, "She got to be from down home, because they don't make behinds like that in the city."
- Sarah Jackson: Steve!
- Steve Jackson: Well, it's the truth.
- Sarah Jackson: Don't you all men ever think about nothin' besides behinds?
- Steve Jackson: Legs and boobs, but mostly behinds.
- The Reverend: Now I should like, at this time, to remind those of you attending our church picnic next Sunday that buses will depart from the front of the church after the service. Now, we want to take a moment also to ask the weak among you to refrain from bringing brown paper bags to the picnic. We're gonna have enough brown paper bags with the lunch in them. You know what I mean? I mean, after all, we are having a church social and not a fraternity boat ride. Now, I repeat, there will be *no* - there will be no joy juice allowed!
- Sharp Eye Washington: Steady on the case. Steady on the case. I'm getting my thing together, too, baby, because I'm Sharp Eye Washington. Steady on the case.
- Congressman Lincoln: How can one work for the good of one's people if one's wife continually airs in public one's dirty laundry?
- Leggy Peggy: The phrase is "putting one's business in the street."
- Geechie Dan Beauford: If you all don't tell me everything I want to know, we gonna beat all the black off both of you.
- Geechie Dan Beauford: You all take these two dogs somewhere and put 'em to sleep.
- Wardell Franklin: Man, you said you was going to let us go!
- Geechie Dan Beauford: You just confessed, turkey. Your ass is grass!
- Geechie Dan Beauford: Down to business, Slim. I don't like your bag. You got no class. Drug dealin', prostitution, vulgar stickups like Madame Zenobia's last Saturday night. That ain't my thing.
- The Reverend: A lot of the people in this church have been going around... spreading falsehoods, lies, and rumors, trying to ruin the reputation... of a lot of other people in this church. They go around trying to rock somebody else's cradle... trying to get a piece of somebody else's pie. Trying to covet somebody else's mate for their own.
- The Reverend: Friends, I fought temptation and that's what we gonna have to learn to do. When we get the temptation to let our loose lips loose, fight it! We got to learn to get off the wrong foot and step out on the good foot. Feel good. When you feel good, you look good, and you want to do good things. You want to make other people happy 'cause it makes you happy yourself.
- The Reverend: The saying that comes back into my mind from that war was, "Loose lips sink ships." Said that, Second World War, 'cause they wanted people to keep their mouths shut and listen a little more. Loose lips sink ships! And the looser the lips are, the faster the ship sinks. And some of the lips in this congregation done sunk aircraft carriers.
- Steve Jackson: How's your other job?
- Wardell Franklin: Rotten, boring, and underpaid, but thank you, Jesus.
- Steve Jackson: I used to take you out by that tree and press you against it real hard and you used to *love* it.
- Sarah Jackson: Stop.
- Steve Jackson: No, it's the truth. You'd hardly wait till I came and took you to that tree and press you against it. You used to say, "Oh, Steve, press me again! Press me again!"
- Sarah Jackson: Steve, you know you lyin'. You know you are.
- Steve Jackson: Girl, you couldn't get enough of that tree.
- Sarah Jackson: You were the freshest man.
- Steve Jackson: I was only doin' what a man's supposed to do.
- Madame Zenobia: Your pleasure is our business, and I'm sure you'll find plenty here to your liking.
- Steve Jackson: Well, I already have.
- Madame Zenobia: Why don't you fellas move around, find something nice to do? If you get bored here and are looking for some real excitement, there is always the room with the red door in the back.
- Steve Jackson: What's in there?
- Madame Zenobia: Happiness. Or, sadness.
- Wardell Franklin: What do you mean by that?
- Madame Zenobia: Why don't you go back there and find out? And, Mr. Jackson, you behave yourself, hear?
- Steve Jackson: You ever been there?
- Wardell Franklin: Yeah - and no. I dropped some people off with the cab, but there be some fine mamas comin' in that place.
- Steve Jackson: Damn, man, we trusted you. I mean, why us?
- Sharp Eye Washington: Why not you, brother?
- Congressman Lincoln: Peg, dear, must you always speak dialect? It's so condescending. We must rid ourselves of these linguistic shackles.
- Leggy Peggy: Honey, hush. You alls have got to forgive my husband. I love his sweet seIf to death but ever since he got hisself a little bit of position, he thinks he's into something. There was a time when he still liked fried chicken!
- Leggy Peggy: Honey, now, that ain't nothing for you to be ashamed of. Them politicians you be hanging out with in Washington be getting into their pleasures a whole lot worser ways than that. Right, brothers?
- Leggy Peggy: I get so *tired* of going to them corny dances, corny dinners we keep getting invited to. You know, the one where you be the token one and everybody standing around looking at you like you something in the zoo. Well, I got tired!
- Steve Jackson: Now listen here, you all, I'm looking fo a corny little runt named Seymour Petigreau. I know you're in here, Seymour, so come on out! I hear you're so ugly - till the sun refuse to shine every time you come out. You're so ugly - till it's against the law in 20 states to marry you.
- Wardell Franklin: Yeah, that's it, Steve. You're cooking. You keep on talking. He's in here somewhere and just remember, I got your back. And dig, say something about his Mama.
- Wardell Franklin: That was the hardest-hittin', fastest, baddest little black man of colored descent, I have ever seen in my life.
- Steve Jackson: I hear your breath's so bad - till you put the three leading toothpastes out of business.
- Geechie Dan Beauford: It's funny, man. One day, I'm on top of the world. And now this thing with Silky Slim. He must be crazy!
- Geechie Dan Beauford: If you don't get away from here soon they are going to be picking up your head from across the street. Now move out, sucker!
- Silky Slim: You team up with me and we rule this town from river to river. Never will so few owe so much to so many.
- The Reverend: Friends, we need more romance and less hot pants! Run some water on the hot pants. Put your sprinkler on and run through, you want to cool your hot pants off. We need more midnight sleepin' and less midnight creepin'!
- The Reverend: You all know I'm talking about the loose lips that go around kissing on lips that don't belong to them. That go around lying on folks that make young girls make promises they know their bodies can't stand. That's the kind of lips I'm talking about. We got to learn to control them lips, tighten up them ears a little tighter! We got to learn to call on the Lord and ask him to teach us some discipline!
- Geechie Dan Beauford: Hang on to your cool, sucker. There's got to be something. There's got to be a way out.
- Geechie Dan Beauford: Rock gonna check you out good and if you ain't clean, I'll come on back here and pick up your liver. Now move out of there, sucker.
- Sharp Eye Washington: I put my life on the line in service to you. That's right. It's a lonely, dangerous life being a private detective. All you do is risk a little money. I solve the cases, and people are after me! Look at my eye, my right eye. See how bloodshot it is? Know how it got that way? From sleeping with one eye open, baby. Life ain't easy. Always on the move, people after me with guns, looking under the hood of your car for bombs, peeking out windows, peering down hallways. ln the movies, right? The movies always got some super nigger killing some white boy in the Mafia - beating up the crooked police. That's not true and it don't help me either. And women. They all got women. Black detective in the movies always got a woman. Watch yourself. Well, I ain't had a woman in how long? Months! Months. I might as well be a monk. And that's what it's like being a detective. That's the real truth of it.
- Steve Jackson: We don't know nothin'.
- Geechie Dan Beauford: Somebody hired you to finger me and I want to know who.
- Steve Jackson: Nobody hired us to do nothin'. I just came to you because I was lookin' for help.
- Geechie Dan Beauford: You're a lying dog, sucker.
- Steve Jackson: No. I ain't. We told you - we don't know nothin' about them guns.
- Geechie Dan Beauford: Nigger!
- [starts beating on Steve]
- Geechie Dan Beauford: And you, too, hot lips!
- [starts beating on Wardell]
- Leggy Peggy: If y'all can't stand the heat, get outta the kitchen. Harry S. Truman, December 17, 1952.
- Wardell Franklin: That's right. I was in the kitchen when he said it.