Deadwood (TV series) Quotations

Deadwood is a weekly HBO television drama that premiered in March 2004, set in the 1870s in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. It features many historical figures, such as Wild Bill Hickok, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, Calamity Jane, and Al Swearengen.

Pilot

Jack McCall: Should we shake hands or something, relieve the atmosphere? I mean how stupid do you think I am?

Bill Hickok: I don't know, I just met you.

Seth Bullock: We got chamber pots to sell ya. And if you don't know what one of those is, the man livin' next to you will appreciate your findin' out.

Merrick: [To Charlie about Wild Bill Hickok] What a grand surprise. I never thought he'd live long enough for me to meet him.

Al Swearengen: Well, I guess when it starts pissin' rain in here, you know who to blame, huh? Now, I know word's circulatin' Indians killed a family on the Spearfish Road. Now it's not for me to tell anyone in this camp what to do, as much as I don't want more people gettin' their throats cut, scalps lifted or any other godless thing that these godless bloodthirsty heathens do. Or even if someone wants to ride out in darkest night. But I will tell you this. I'd use tonight to get myself organized. Ride out in the morning clear-headed. And startin' tomorrow morning, I will offer a personal $50 bounty for every decapitated head of as many of these godless heathen cocksuckers as anyone can bring in. Tomorrow. With no upper limit! That's all I say on that subject, 'cept next round's on the house. And God rest the souls of that poor family. And pussy's half price, next 15 minutes.

Calamity Jane: Is it true? Indians killin' white people?

Dan: That's the sewer mouth that follows Hickok around.

Calamity Jane: Why are we standin' here?

Guy: Ridin' out tomorrow, daybreak.

Calamity Jane: Oh, really? Tomorrow. What's your fuckin' rush?! I'm goin' now. Even without Bill. Even without Charlie. I know the road to Spearfish. And I don't drink where I'm the only fuckin' one with balls!

Deep Water

Doc Cochran: I see as much misery outta them movin’ to justify their selves as them that set out to do harm.

Al Swearengen: Let's leave it all alone. I'm stupidest when I try to be funny.

Al Swearengen: You don't want to interfere with me.

Calamity Jane: You think I'm scared of you?

Al Swearengen: Sure you are. And if I take a knife to you you'll be scared worse and a long time dying.

Wild Bill Hickok: If irritating me is the jackpot, you got the job done.

Reverend Smith: Men like Mr. Seth Bullock there raise the camp up.

Johnny: Yeah, the fella to be put in that box might argue with you, Reverend.

Reverend Smith: Ah, Mr. Bullock did not draw first. And I, point to his commissioning me to build the departed a coffin and, and see to his Christian burial.

Reconnoitering the Rim

Jack McCall: [While playing poker] Well, that's one in a row for you, Wild Bill. Who's hungry? What in the hell damn time is it anyway?

Wild Bill: Sure you wanna quit playin', Jack? The game's all that's between you and gettin' called a cunt.

Tom Nuttall: Ah, meeting adjourned, fellas. Take it outside.

Wild Bill: That drooped eye of yours looks like the hood of a cunt to me, Jack. When you talk, your mouth looks like a cunt moving.

Jack McCall: I ain't gonna get in no gunfight with you, Hickock.

Wild Bill: But you will run your cunt mouth at me. And I will take it to play poker.

Al Swearengen: [during a meeting with Johnny Burns, E.B. Farnum, and Jimmy Irons] I wanna know who cut the cheese. [nobody answers] I'll tell you this for openers: we are gonna set off an area on the balcony. [opens the door to the balcony] And God help whoever doesn't use it, because the next stink I have to smell in this office, and whoever doesn't admit to it is going out the window, into the muck, onto their fucking heads, and we'll see how they like farting from that position, okay?

Al Swearengen: [discussing Custer at Little Bighorn] I'll tell you this, son, you can mark my words, Crazy Horse went into Little Bighorn, bought his people one good, long-term ass-fucking. You do not want to be a dirt-worshipping heathen from this fucking point forward. Pardon my French.

Joanie Stubbs: Oh, I speak French.

Brom Garret: If I'm stooped when next you see me, Alma, it won't be worry weighing me down, but bags of our recovered gold.

Alma Garret: If you wish to see more of the West let's leave now and see it, or else return back to New York. I don't think we should linger here.

Al Swearengen: Every fuckin’ beatin’ I’m grateful for. Every fuckin’ one of them. Get all the trust beat outta you. And you know what the fuckin’ world is.

Here Was A Man

Wild Bill Hickock: [on prospecting] What slows me down is thinking about freezing my balls off in a creek for the cocksuckers I'd lose the gold to at poker.

Cy Tolliver: How about a nap, a bath and sex with a unfamiliar woman?

Wild Bill Hickok: Some goddamn point a man's due to stop arguing with hisself and feeling twice the goddamn fool he knows he is 'cause he can't be something he tries to be every goddamn day without once getting to dinnertime and fucking it up. I don't want to fight it no more, understand me Charlie? — and I don't need you pissing in my ear about it. Will you let me go to hell the way I want to?

Charlie Utter Yeah. I can do that.

Al Swearengen: Her husband came here with childish ideas. Bought himself a gold claim with me an honest broker. Claim pinches out, which will happen. But he can't take that like a man, has to blame somebody. Seller's left camp, so he picks on me. Says he'll bring in the Pinkertons if I don't offer restitution. I got a healthy operation and I didn’t build it brooding on the right, and wrong of things. I do not need the Pinkertons descending like locusts. So I bend over for the tenderfoot cocksucker. Reconnoiter your claim fully, I say. And then, if you're still unhappy, I will give you your fucking money back. And the tenderfoot agrees. Just as he's finishing his reconnoiter, cocksucker falls to his death, pure fucking accident. But up jumps the widow in righteous fucking indignation. Wants the doctor to examine him for murder wounds. My visions of locusts return. I see Pinkertons coming in swarms.

Wild Bill Hickock: You know the sound of thunder, don't you, Mrs. Garrett?

The Trial of Jack McCall

Doc Cochran: I don't know if this is the time for you to stop takin' this laudanum, Mrs. Garrett.

Alma Garret: What a pleasant surprise, doctor. To hear you admit the limits of your knowledge.

Al Swearengen: Let me say this once in your hearing. For outright stupidity, the whole fuckin' trial concept goes shoulder to shoulder with that cocksucker Custer's thinkin' when he headed for that ridge.

Cy Tolliver: It's got its disadvantages.

Al Swearengen: We’re illegal. Our whole goal is to get annexed to the United fuckin' States. We start holdin' trials, what's to keep the United States fuckin' Congress from sayin' "Oh, excuse us, we didn't realize you were a fuckin' sovereign community and nation out there. Where's your cocksucker's flag? Where's your fuckin’ navy or the like? Maybe when we make our treaty with the Sioux, we should treat you people like renegade fuckin' Indians. Deny your fuckin' gold and property claims. And hand everything over instead to our ne'er-do-well cousins and brothers-in-law."

Cy Tolliver: That we don't want.

Al Swearengen: Before a guilty verdict would get executed on that cocksucker, three men would walk in that meat locker where he's bein' held with bags over their heads and cut his fuckin' throat. And within half an hour, that celestial's little pigs will be on their backs with their hooves in the air, belching up human remains.

Judge: Are you saying you'd order that to be done?

Al Swearengen: I'm sayin' I had a vision it'd happen. My second of the day. First come when I was watchin' you and them lawyers on line this morning. They began to slither in my sight like vipers. So as not to puke, I had to close my eyes. The vision went on. Got worse. I saw the vipers in the big nest in Washington. They were takin' us in the camp for actin' like we could set out own laws up or organizations and then saw the big viper decide to strangle and swallow us up every fuckin' thing we gain here. It was horrible. How could we fuckin' avoid it? How could we let the vipers in the big nest know that we didn’t wanna cause any fuckin' trouble?

Judge: And that's when you had your second vision.

Al Swearengen: Yeah, the cut throats and the pigs. But who wants all that blood spilled, judge, huh? Isn't there a simpler way of not pissing off the big vipers?

Al Swearengen: Sometimes I wish we could just hit 'em over the head, rob 'em, and throw their bodies in the creek.

Cy Tolliver: But that would be wrong.

E.B: What's he ever done for me? Except let me terrify him every goddamned day of his life 'til the idea of bowel regularity is a forlorn fuckin' hope.

Plague

A.W. Merrick: May I say, Dan, having resumed drinking alcohol, I cannot for the life of me remember why I ever gave it up.

Al Swearengen: I’d rather try touching the moon than take on a whore’s thinking.

Doc Cochran: I take it you’ve been out on a hoot?

Calamity Jane: I’ve been drunk awhile; correct. What the fuck is that to you?

Doc Cochran: The question was well meant. Like if you was a farmer, I’d ask ya how the farming was going.

Charlie Utter: [on burying a dead Native] You ain’t doin’ him no favor. I mean his way to heaven’s above ground and lookin’ west.

Seth Bullock: Let’s do that, then.

Charlie Utter: Don’t you want to take him over the ridge? To his fuckin' Holy Ground and put him up there with his headless buddy? I mean, that’s what you nearly got killed for: interfering with his big fuckin’ medicine, burying his fuckin’ buddy, over the fuckin’ ridge!

Calamity Jane: I'm calling on the widow and the little one in her care, and if I was you I wouldn't try to stop me.

E.B.: Be brief!

Calamity Jane: Be fucked!

E.B.: Her gutter mouth, and the widow in an opium stupor: a conversation for the ages.

Bullock Returns to the Camp

Al Swearengen: We teach a special sweeping technique here.

[Al indicates Jewel, who is sweeping the stairs.]

Al Swearengen: Say what you’re gonna say or prepare for eternal fucking silence.

Al Swearengen: Oh, do you worry for her, Dan? Wandering the muck of our thoroughfare, her tiny self all but swallowed up in horseshit?

Miles: They're nice here. And Mr. Swearengen's funny as all hell.

Suffer the Little Children

Rider: God bless you, Mr. Swearengen.

Swearengen: Well, not likely. But my short-term prospects have just improved.

A.W. Merrick: Why did you strike me?

Doc Cochran: To secure your attention.

Alma Garrett: [on her claim] Is the technical term "bonanza"? [Seth nods] It's a bonanza, Mr. Farnum.

Al Swearengen: Dan’s a fucking expert. When he’s not shit-faced drunk, so’s Ellsworth.

Al Swearengen: My oath on this: Every day that the widow sits on her ass in New York City, looks west at sunset and thinks to herself "God bless you ignorant cocksuckers in Deadwood, who do strive mightily and at little money to add to my ever-increasing fortune," she’ll be safe from the wiles of Al Swearengen.

No Other Sons or Daughters

Al Swearengen: In life you have to do a lot of things you don't fucking want to do. Many times, that's what the fuck life is... one vile fucking task after another. But don't get aggravated.... then the enemy has you by the short hairs.

Al Swearengen: The direction of my thoughts — with the sustained fucking stupidity that you’re exhibiting, I hesitate to voice them — is that you might want to train for Phil’s former position.

Johnny: Al... I have hoped for this conversation ever since you give me that Indian head to hide.

Johnny: [coming down the stairs] Hey, Al. Any reason I can’t share with Dan the, uh, proceedings of the talk me and you just had about me, uh, takin’ over for Persimmon Phil?

Al Swearengen: Yeah, keep Dan in the dark.

[Johnny looks at Al, crestfallen.]

Dan: Hey, Johnny.

Johnny: Dan.

Dan: What’s new?

[Johnny looks down sadly and says nothing.]

Mister Wu

[Wu is explaining his problem to Al by drawing pictures]

Mr. Wu: Bok Gwai Lo... cocksucka!

Al Swearengen: Yeah, glad I taught you that fuckin’ word. These are whites, huh?

Mr. Wu: White cocksucka! [shows empty bag]

Al Swearengen: Two white cocksuckers killed him and stole the dope that he was bringing to you.

Mr. Wu: White cocksucka! You, Swedgin.

Al Swearengen: [suddenly enraged] The dope that you were gonna fuckin’ sell to me?

Mr. Wu: White cocksucka.

Al Swearengen: These two white cocksuckers? Who the fuck did it?

Mr. Wu: Wu?

Al Swearengen: "Who," you ignorant fuckin’ chink!

Mr. Wu: Wu!

Al Swearengen: Who? Who? Who stole the fucking dope?

Mr. Wu: Cocksucka!

Al Swearengen: Aw, Jesus.

E.B.: Anything the mayor should know?

Al Swearengen: The name of another tailor.

Al Swearengen: As damp as your hands are, why do you continuously lick your fuckin’ thumb?

E.B.: Habit, I suppose.

Al Swearengen: Could you learn the habit of lickin’ a fuckin’ stump?

Al Swearengen: Even money, this'll end in a bloodbath.

Al Swearengen: You can't slit the throat of everyone whose character it would improve.

Jewel's Boot Is Made For Walking

Silas Adams: They believe you’re the man to deal with. Yankton.

Al Swearengen: I am.

Silas Adams: It’s just the magistrate looking to earn off that warrant. But no one else even knows it’s out on you.

Al Swearengen: Maybe the magistrate needs to die.

Silas Adams: Maybe he does.

[On Stapleton being appointed Sheriff]

Al Swearengen: Bullock, it’s a ceremonial position to give comfort to Tom Nuttall, who feels the camp’s leavin’ him behind. Putting a badge on Stapleton makes him feel he’s got friends in high places.

Seth Bullock: That job shouldn’t go to a shitheel.

Al Swearengen: Where as my feeling would be it should go to a shitheel, as it’s shitheel’s work.

Al Swearengen: I want to tell you somethin’ about the law. Please, take a seat. Separate from all the bribes we put up, I paid 5000 dollars to avoid being the object of fireside ditties about a man that fled a murder warrant then worked very hard to get his camp annexed by the territory, only to have them serve the warrant of him and to face the six-foot drop. Into the magistrate’s pocket the money goes, after which he sends a message. The 5000’ll need company if I’m to be off the hook. I give you the law.

Seth: It doesn’t have to be like that.

Al Swearengen: Don’t you think I don’t understand. I mean, what can anyone of us ever really fuckin’ hope for, huh? Except for a moment here and there with a person who doesn’t want to rob, steal or murder us? At night, it may happen. Sun-up, one person against the fuckin’ wall, the other may hop on the fuckin’ bed trusting each other enough to tell half the fucking truth. Everybody needs that. Becomes precious to ‘em. They don’t want to see it fucked with.

Sol: I won’t pay.

Al Swearengen: You pay…or she pays. No home visits. Do your visiting on the premises, five. [Sol slides five coins across the bar] Seven for an ass-fuck.

Seth Bullock: Cold enough world without gettin' gone against by your own.

Sold Under Sin

Al Swearengen: This bloated tick, Claggett, feeding on the neck of the fucking military.

Al Swearengen: Walk in unannounced is a good way to get yourself killed, Doc.

Otis Russell: [To E.B.] It must cost you sleep, the guests you drive off, the chances of thievin’ and bilkin’ you lose needing to rub against your betters.

Seth Bullock: I'll be the fucking sheriff.

Al Swearengen: Startin' when?

Seth Bullock: Startin' now.

Al Swearengen: Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh.

A Lie Agreed Upon, Part One

Al Swearengen: [on Bullock and his affair with Alma] He don’t know if he’s breathing or taking it in through fucking gills; he is that fucking cunt-struck. They’re afloat in some fairy fucking bubble, lighter than air. Him, her snatch and his stupid fucking badge

Al Swearengen: Welcome to fuckin' Deadwood! Can be... combative!

Al Swearengen: Wave a penny under the Jew's nose. They have living breath in them, brings 'em right round.

Seth Bullock: Will I find you have a knife on you?

Al Swearengen: I won't need no fuckin' knife.

Al Swearengen: What's the matter — taken by a vision? You would not want to be staring like that at me.

A Lie Agreed Upon, Part Two

Doc Cochran: Jane, for me the female breast long ago lost mystery or allure. Open your goddamn blouse.

Calamity Jane: I'll keep my fucking eyes shut, but I'll know every fucking move you make.

Al: Over time, your quickness with a cocky rejoinder must have gotten you many punches in the face.

Alma Garret: We do love each other. Our being together aught not to seem so outlandish a proposition. Except for every other damn thing.

Swearengen: A full fair-mindedness requires us also to report that within the Gem, on Deadwood's main thoroughfare, comely whores, decently priced liquor and the squarest games of chance in the hills remain unabatedly available at all hours, seven days a week.

Merrick: The economic aspect is one fabric in the tapestry of journalism.

Swearengen: Ass-fucking the dirt worshippers being another? A pleasure beyond gain.

Merrick: Now, now, now.

Swearengen: Oh, is that your Heathen imitation? Jump up and down and give a few whoops, as in "Whoop, that ass fucking hurts."

New Money

E.B. Farnum: Al, if you're not dead and already moldering, I send news to revive you. A fish to rival the fabled Leviathan has swum into our waters. Get well soon and we'll land the cocksucker together. Your friend, E.B.

Seth Bullock: Swearengen said the county commissioners are all from Yankton.

Sol Star: When was this?

Seth Bullock: Just before we hit the mud. It’s wrong the hills get no representation.

Sol Star: Even in an Eden like this, wrongs sometimes occur.

Francis Wolcott: You’ve approached a group in San Francisco that does business with my employer.

Cy Tolliver: That group and employer bullshit really quickens me with fuckin’ trust.

Wolcott: That group you’ve approached is a fraternal Chinese organization.

Tolliver: “Tong” is not a clever enough word?

Wolcott: You offered them a contract to send members to this camp. That organization has a pre-existing arrangement with my employer.

Tolliver: So you work for who, Wolcott? The railroads? Some mining combination that brings those slant-eyes in by the boatload?

Wolcott: No, sir. I work for one man.

E.B. Farnham: Some ancient Italian maxim fits our situation, whose particulars escape me.

Francis Wolcott: Is the gist that I’m shit outta luck?

Farnham: Did they speak that way then?

Requiem for a Gleet

Ellsworth Because them as poke around Miz Garret’s workings without a by-your-leave ain’t welcome, Mr. Wolcott, and you ought not to repeat your fuckin’ mistake.

Wolcott Well, that’s an uncivil response to an innocent error.

Ellsworth Did you work in the Comstock when you was beardless?

Wolcott I did.

Ellsworth For Mr. George Hearst, as a keen eye for the color?

Wolcott As a geologist for Mr. Hearst. Well, you have the advantage of me, Mr. Ellsworth.

Ellsworth That ain’t a possibility, Wolcott. No more than an error of yours would be innocent.

Wolcott I do dimly recall an Ellsworth superintended the consolidated Virginia operations.

Ellsworth I don’t give a fuck what you recall.

Wolcott A hero. Dug a week without respite to save three poor souls from a cave-in.

Ellsworth And 46 corpses in a fucking hole that ought never to have been dug.

Wolcott Always a choice... to count the saved or the lost.

Ellsworth Get off this property.

Wolcott Just as a man opposed to inevitable change needn’t invariably be called a Luddite, another choice might be simply to describe him as slow in his processes.

Ellsworth You tell that cocksucker you work for the next surrogate he sends oughtn’t to be bloodied from the Comstock.

Complications

Al: [after waking up from his 'coma'] Did you fuck me when I was out?

Dan: Hell, no.

Al: Then quit looking at me like that.

Richardson: I like you.

Alma: Thank you, Richardson.

Richardson: You’re purdy.

Alma: Thank you very much. And probably that’s all either of us needs to say on that subject ever again.

Hugo: Had you vision as well as sight, you would recognize within me not only a man, but an institution and the future as well.

Steve: Fuck you, fuck the institution, and fuck the future!

Hugo: You cannot fuck the future, sir. The future fucks you.

Something Very Expensive

Doc Cochran: You, Al, are an object lesson in the healing powers of obstinacy and a hostile disposition.

Sol: If you keep it up, we're going to fight, and you'll have to work by yourself while I convalesce.

Commissioner Jarry: And you, Mr. Wolcott, I find you the most severe disappointment of all.

Wolcott: Often to myself as well.

Merrick: Lot, before God, could make no case for that food.

Mary: Lot’s wife may have been in that food.

E.B. was Left Out

Al Swearengen: Pain or damage don’t end the world, or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man — and give some back.

Alma Garret: [regarding Sofia] You frighten her.

Al Swearengen: I have that effect.

Alma Garret: I think specifically it was your plotting against her life.

Dority: Fucks himself up the ass, Tolliver.

Swearengen: No mean feat! Yet how often we bring it off.

Barfly: I won't fuck Chinese; I got a mother living yet.

Hawkeye: She the jealous type?

Con: Hey, you ever hear, Tom, the Chinese whore has a ancient way of milking ya of yer sorrow, your loneliness and that awful feeling of bein’ forsaken?

Tom: Seems to me that’d leave you with nothing.

Childish Things

Seth Bullock: Maybe you’re mistrusted less as a killer than showin’ your cards a corner at a time.

Tom: My bicycle masters boardwalk and quagmire with aplomb. Those that doubt me, suck cock by choice.

Dan: Sometimes I hear you speakin’ in here when I know there’s nobody in here but you.

Al: You have not yet reached the age, Dan, have you, where you’re moved to utterance of thoughts properly kept silent?

Dan: Been known to mutter.

Al: Not the odd mutter. Habitual fuckin’ vocalizing of thoughts best kept to yourself. I will confide further. Lately... I talk to this package: the severed rotting head I paid bounty on last year of that murdered fuckin’ Indian.

Joanie Stubbs: Would you like a drink?

Jane: Yes. But my opening position is no.

Charlie: [at Bill Hickock's grave] Evenin’, Bill. Jane ain’t with me, ‘cause she’s a drunken fuckin’ mess, and I don’t know what to do about it. I know you want her looked out for, and I’m doin’ my fuckin’ best. But I won’t stand before you claimin’ optimism. Other news. That letter you wrote your wife just before that cocksucker murdered you, it come to my hand. I won’t even try explainin’ fuckin’ how. And knowin’ what we know about our fucked up postal system, I ain’t committin’ it to the fuckin’ mails. You know I will try to get it to her, which I pray’d be a portion off your mind. When I’ve found where she’s at, on my way settin’ off I’ll tell you. All right. God bless you, Bill. [starts to leave and then turns back] And as far as Jane, as drunk as you’ve seen her, you’ve never seen her this worse. Between us, maybe havin’ lost, wantin’ to keep on. So I - I don’t know what the fuck to do! But you know I’ll — I’ll keep tryin.’ [leaves]

Amalgamation and Capital

Samuel Fields: [talking to a horse before he and Hostetler castrate it] Now, if you want to take it out on someone, remember it was very dark-skinned white folks that cut on you. They just sounded like niggers to throw you off.

Tom Nuttall: Knowledge is overrated, William. Diligence is what’s required in the service of a willing spirit.

Wolcott: On my order, Mr. Tolliver, Lee will burn this building, mutilating you before, during or after as I specify, or when he chooses unless I forbid.

Advances, None Miraculous

Hostetler: Horse run trash like that over by accident, still ain’t a white man on earth gonna stand up against roping us up, now is there?

Samuel Fields: John Brown would’ve.

Al Swearengen: Sign these documents and leave unharmed.

Alice Isringhausen: I can’t trust that, Mr. Swearengen, being that it’s not to your interests.

Al Swearengen: That applies to you most, fuckin’ sittin’ in that chair distracting my fuckin’ thinking. If I have to come over there, I’ll cut your fuckin’ throat for you, pen yet put to paper or not.

A.W. Merrick: And thus the uncharted journey continues.

Al Swearengen: Merrick, please. As we’ll be more often in each other’s company, when given to utterance of that type — consider drinking

Wolcott: I am a sinner who does not expect forgiveness. But I am not a government official.

Hugo: I do not, my friend Adams, take it up the ass... But I suspect those that do, do so because they consider they advance their own interests. Shall we not, like them, pursue our mutual gratification?

The Whores Can Come

Al Swearengen: It wouldn’t be the worst thing, backing a loser to Hearst. Let him pick me up from the canvas after, dust me the fuck off. I raise the great man’s hand and murmur, best as I can through split lips, "Your man beat my man’s balls off, Mr. Hearst." But Hearst’s chink boss in that alley ain’t to my fuckin’ taste. So what if something delays the battle of the chinks? Say, durin’ that interval I get to show my ass a few times to Mr. Hearst. Meanwhile, that pain in the balls Wu is sketching up a storm, drawin’ fuckin’ little pictures of himself brandishin’ the lash, drivin’ from a delivery ship a quota of chinks to be blown to pieces by dynamite working in the mines for Hearst at half the fee, per chink, that Hearst is paying the San Francisco cocksucker. Now, by this time Hearst has seen my ass so many times, he knows I’m no long-term threat. So some brief opposition of our interests ain’t gonna make him feel like he needs to engage me in a death struggle, say, by opposin’ local elections. Those circumstances, we can risk backing Wu, and the great man figures, "I am damaged by neither outcome. Why not retire to a neutral corner and test my import against the locals?"

Boy the Earth Talks To

Hearst: [noticing a stuffed buck's head on the wall] Your kill, sir?

Swearengen: Who?

Hearst: The animal.

Swearengen: Oh fuck no, I'm a fucking terrible shot. Work better closer in.

Tom Nuttall:There’s talk of an offer on my place.

Al Swearengen: How will you answer?

Tom Nuttall: I came to take counsel with you.

Al Swearengen: Drunk or sober is my question.

Tom Nuttall: Well, I have my wits about me, Al.

Al Swearengen: Maybe, then, you’ll want a few more, huh?

Tom Nuttall: Don’t talk to me in fucking riddles.

Al Swearengen: Drunk, Tom, for reasons not to do with business, you’ll sell. If that’s your decision, let me offer. Sober, you know sellin’s stupid.

Hearst: [slaps the wall of his room in the Grand Central Hotel] These walls are coming down.

Wolcott: They'll be your walls soon.

Hearst: Ever since I was a child in Missouri I've been down ever hole I could find.

Wolcott: Boy-the-earth-talks-to.

Hearst: Yeah, I've told you, that's what the Indians call me.

Wolcott: Yes.

Hearst: It talks to you too, Francis, I know. Our time together, your hearing has stayed keen. But this gambler Tolliver, who was our agent for buying the claims has spoken to me about you. He says that you've killed women. Prostitutes. That he has disposed of the bodies for you.

Wolcott: [stunned, fumbles putting out his cigar]

Hearst: WELL!?

Wolcott: When I was in Campeche, you wrote a letter on my behalf.

Hearst: To the Jefe de Policia.

Wolcott: "I am aware of Mr. Wolcott's difficulty. You will find me personally grateful for any adjustments you may make in his case." What did you think that was about?

Hearst: I didn't think about it. You were my agent in Mexico! You had many responsibilities. You asked me for the letter and I wrote it!

Wolcott: As when the earth talks to you particularly, you never ask its reasons.

Hearst: I don't need to know why I'm lucky!

Wolcott: What if the earth talks to us to get us to arrange its amusements?

Hearst: That sounds like goddamned nonsense to me.

Wolcott: Suppose to you it whispers, "You are king over me. I exist to flesh your will."

Hearst: Nonsense.

Wolcott: And to me... "There is no sin." It happened in Mexico and now it's happened here.

Hearst: We must end our connection, you understand that, Francis. Make a severance you think is fair. You know I won't quibble. Does some spirit overtake you? Is that what you mean by the "talk"?

Wolcott: No.

Hearst: It tells me where the color is. That's all it tells me. My God.

Tell Your God to Ready For Blood

Al Swearengen: [on Sol Star] He’s a candidate for office. He can’t whore-fuck no longer with impunity.

Calamity Jane: Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live.

Al: You see me empty, Sir, do not pause and inquire, simply assume and refill.

Al Swearengen: Bloodletting on my premises that I ain’t approved I take as a fucking affront. It puts me off my feed.

Hearst:How do we know when you are off your feed?

Al Swearengen: You’ll start to see me tearing things down. Speeches tonight are canceled. Unless the insult’s cured by tomorrow, there’ll be further tearing down. Fuck the fucking elections, and fuck the agreement with Yankton. Let the camp return to its former repute: unstable and unsafe for commerce.

Hearst: I’m a great believer in those.

Al Swearengen: Oh, stability, Sir, and commerce? I can fucking imagine. Think of all they’ve helped you accomplish.

Calamity Jane: I drink what I’m able. If that comes to much, that’s the day’s affair and the liquor’s.

I Am Not the Fine Man You Take Me For

A.W. Merrick: It was gunfire, and it came from your saloon.

Al Swearengen: Has not the press a duty, Merrick, qualifying its accounts in time of war?

A.W. Merrick: Are we at war now here in the camp? Has that fact been suppressed as well? Absent formal declaration, Al, information which affects this community is not my prerogative to disseminate. To do so is my sacred responsibility.

Al Swearengen: Whores currently disseminating a dose, for example?

A.W. Merrick: To inform within decency’s limits. We’ve had this discussion before.

Al Swearengen: Citizens better die postulating than touch indecent ink.

A.W. Merrick: Make a list of the infected whores and account for this morning’s gunfire, and I’ll publish it all.

Al Swearengen: I won’t, fucking Merrick, because neither’s to my fucking interests.

Hearst: To labor without pleasure makes us our destiny’s slaves.

Swearengen: To work for crumbs or to keep from the lash says maybe a slave’s what you are.

Hearst: Accepting your premise, Mr. Swearengen, I’ll not name how you would benefit from the action I wish you to take, saying only instead it’s my will. To which I will have you bend.

Farnum: Puberty may bring you to understand what we take for mother-love is really murderous hatred and a desire for revenge.

Dan:I’m older, and I’m much less friendly to fuckin’ change.

Al Swearengen:Change ain’t lookin’ for friends. Change calls the tune we dance to.

True Colors

Jack Langrishe: It's the learning fuckin' nothin', Al, that keeps me young.

A.W. Merrick: A. W. Merrick, Mr. Langrishe, publisher of "The Deadwood Pioneer."

Jack Langrishe: Ah! Accounting for the halo I see above you.

Al Swearengen: Shit blizzard’s early today.

E.B. Farnham: [describing Mrs Ellsworth to Hearst] A haughty cunt. Formerly weak for dope. Most fundamentally a sexual peccant, though I’m sworn against providing specifics.

Ellsworth: Whatever’s toward what he wants. Not a flying fuck if it’s true or how fucking soaked in blood.

Alma: That talk serves no purpose.

Ellsworth: What talk to a murderer does?

Hearst: I’d not be insulted in my own rooms, Mr. Ellsworth.

Ellsworth: Where shall we go for me to do it?

Al Swearengen: What makes you think any good will come of confronting Hearst now?

Seth Bullock: Now is when he’s killing people.

Al Swearengen: What, you feel he’ll leave off soon?

Seth Bullock: Tactics and timing ain’t the issue.

Al Swearengen: The hell you say.

Full Faith and Credit

Langrishe: Shall I accompany as your second? My obvious unsuitability might confuse him.

Charlie Utter: Nigger General and Hostetler brung that horse back to camp that got away from ‘em and trampled the Sheriff’s boy.

Joanie Stubbs: Is that so?

Charlie Utter: Wherever the two of them was, I guess they didn’t feel their lives were in enough danger.

Al Swearengen: I did not shame myself. I keep an open mind in that area. Kid yourself about your behaviour, you'll never learn a fuckin' thing. I knew it was comin' too. Fuckin' Captain, holdin' me down. I knew what the fuck was next.

Dolly: When he chopped off your finger?

Al Swearengen: He didn't chop off my finger! Hearst chopped my fuckin' finger off; the other fuck held me down! They hold you down, y-you can't get at 'em to help yourself. Fuckin' cold in here anyway, isn't it?

Dolly: You want a blanket?

Al Swearengen: If I do I'll put it round me, you ain't boss of the fuckin' bedclothes! They hold you down from behind. Then you wonder why you're helpless. How the fuck could you not be?

Dolly: I don't like it either.

Al Swearengen: Another one that held me down, that fuckin' Proctor when I tried to get to that ship. He fuckin' held me, fuckin' wouldn't let me go. Fuckin' in my mind, y'see, she was being restrained, couldn't get back off, that had got on the boat to fuckin' New Orleans to go suck prick in Georgia. She changed her mind, and I was bein' restrained by that fat, bastard orphanage Proctor! Anyway, that's it, that's the end of it, that's the fuckin' conclusion ... CHRIST, I'D'VE WISHED TO- [catches himself] Though probably she'd'a thrown be overboard anyway, but I'd'a wished to get to that fuckin' ship. But I was bein' restrained. I couldn't get from where she'd left me. He held me to that bed, her callin' from the ship that had changed her mind.

Dolly [quietly]: I don't like it either.

Al Swearengen: No, huh? ... What?

Dolly: When they hold you down.

Al Swearengen: I guess I do that, huh, with your fuckin' hair?

Dolly: No

Al Swearengen: No?... Well, bless you for a fuckin' fibber.

A Two-Headed Beast

Al Swearengen: [Hearst] makes of me and Tolliver a two-headed beast to savage what might be healthy borne out of the fucking election and gnaw its own privates off-hours. Plans keep coming to the cocksucker, that their final sum is this: but for what brings income to him, break what he can; what he can’t, set those parts against themselves to weaken.

Johnny: If it's gettin' to go wrong, Dan, you just drop flat.

Dan: What the fuck did you just say?

Johnny: Drop flat if it's going wrong, and I'll blow his fucking head off

Dan: You do and it'll be the last goddamn thing you do on this fucking earth. Going wrong is not the end of fucking things, Johnny. Fuck no! I have come back from plenty of shit that looked like it was going wrong.

Trixie: The bank’s founder and president, Chief Officer as well, of air-headed smugness and headlong plunges unawares into the fucking abyss.

Sol Star: I don’t understand.

Trixie: You wouldn’t. You’re too fucking healthy-minded. You’ll sit here waiting for me to materialize from a piece of fucking furniture and think the world is normal.

Johnny: I wish you'd look in on Dan, boss. Not for being poorly as... down.

Al Swearengen: Johnny... some shit's best walked through alone.

Johnny: Dan's killed people before. You have too. But neither've been solitary after

Al Swearengen: A fair fight, something Dan and I have always struggled to avoid, is different. You see the light go out in their eyes. It's just you left, and death.

Hearst : When I say fuck yourself, Sheriff, will you put that down to drunkenness or a high estimate of your athleticism?

A Rich Find

E.B. Farnham: It’s Hearst. Hearst: is he Caesar, to have fights to the death for diversion? Murder his workers at whim? Smash passages in the fucking wall? A man of less wealth would be in fucking restraints.

Al: We’re in the presence of the new.

E.B.: Fuck the fucking new! Jesus Christ, Al. Is it over for us here?

Charlie Utter: One thing: if he knew it was coming, Bill [Hickock] was not shy of drawing first.

Sol: Seth locked up Hearst instead of that.

Charlie Utter: Oh, I get it.

Sol: What does that mean?

Charlie Utter: It means, Mr. Star, after leading him by the ear through camp for all to fucking see, Seth installs Hearst in a cell adjoining a man he’s had killed, that the knife still protrudes out of his chest. And as much as me and Hearst conversed, I made him address my ass. So do let’s don’t pretend Hearst will feel he was treated legal or civilized, or that his business with us is finished. Hearst is fucking coming. Bringing us back to Bill and doing unto others first. Which ought maybe include a visit to Hearst’s fucking diggings. And his muscle you fail to murder before they arouse? You bring to chase you to camp, Judas goat the cocksuckers, for Swearengen’s men and Tolliver’s to mow down from fucking ambush while we’re up seeing to Hearst.

Sol: There’ll be nothing left of the camp.

Charlie Utter: How much you figure will stand once Hearst had his fucking say?

Hearst: This place displeases me. I’m taking measures to bring it down.

Al Swearengen: That they’re armed and awake don’t have to mean they’re fucking hired.

Dan Dority: Yeah, and when I feel a shit coming on I’ll remember to drop my pants.

Al Swearengen: The obvious merits utterance. Character is fucking pertinent.

Dan Dority: If I’m to go, I’d as soon get started before the darkness.

Al Swearengen: Going means the darkness is upon us.

Seth: Charlie Utter thinks it has to come to blood.

Al: Charlie Utter’s likely right.

Seth: And if it has to, that we should strike first.

Al: Believe me, even now in the forest the blade would be between my teeth; me and you making our way stealthily forward. And as to us and him, if blood’s what it finally comes to, 100 years from now the forest is what they’ll find here. Dewy morning’s lost its appeal for me. I prefer to wake indoors. Dan! You don’t travel tonight! Need of canned peaches, Johnny. Let’s collect the camp elders. Be baffled among friends, huh?

Unauthorized Cinnamon

George Hearst: I knocked holes in these walls. Confinement gives me the fidgets.

Odell: Set yourself up comfortable.

George Hearst: Let me confide as well, Odell, that when people only say to me with other words what I have just said to them, I quickly grow impatient.

George Hearst: Gold is every man’s opportunity. Why do I make that argument? Because every defect in a man and in others a way of taking him. Our agreement that gold has value gives us power to rise above.

Odell: Fond as you are of my mother, without that gold I showed you, I don’t expect we’d be out here talking.

George Hearst: That is correct. And for your effrontery at our meal a moment ago, I’d have seen you shot or hanged without second thought. The value I gave the gold restrained me, you see? your utility in connection to it. And because of my gold those at the other tables deferred to my restraint. Gold confers power. Power comes to any man who has the color.

Blazanov: Fuck confidentiality of communication.

Al Swearengen: Why not fuck a woman instead?

Blazanov: Hope to, eventually.

Hearst: I hate these places, Odell, because the truth that I know, the promise that I bring, the necessities I'm prepared to accept make me outcast. Isn't that foolish? Isn't that foolishness? An old man disabused long ago of certain yearnings and hopes as to how he would be held by his fellows, and yet I weep.

Al Swearengen: [to Doc] Jesus Christ! The fucking gimp finds something useful to do in the fucking brace you made her. Do you think you could treat "Being Johnny" — always struggling to fashion a fuckin' thought? Every fucking night, I, that could cut a throat and sleep the sleep of the just, spend six fucking wakings trying to find a piss-pot with my dribble and wondering when I got to be so old. [throws swatches down to Doc] Pick a fucking swatch for a spit rag, use the others for masks, and go about your fucking business. I ain't learning a new doc's quirks!

Leviathan Smiles

George Hearst: I’m to take you for majestically neutral?

Merrick: I’d make the less exalted claim, as a journalist, of keeping my opinions to myself.

George Hearst: You are less majestically neutral than cloaking your cowardice in principle?

Merrick: I can only answer perhaps, Mr. Hearst, events have not yet disclosed to me all that I am.

Samuel Fields: Cause I’m a nigger, Doc, that don’t care what stands or falls.

Doc Cochran: Hostetler was too.

Samuel Fields: Hostetler was taller than me.

Johnny: You say it weren’t an ass fuck, I believe you.

Seth Bullock: I’ve had a wire... says your statement is true, far as having worked as a lawman. Not asking why you put the work aside, I’ll say only some that do find themselves ready and uniquely able to work the other side of the street. Some do that. I took the badge off myself once; without losing my impulse to beat on certain types.

Wyatt Earp: No, that seems never to go.

Cy Tolliver: [on seeing a gang of Pinkertons ride into camp] Take them amateurs off the fucking sugar tit. Mr. Hearst brought the pros to town.

Amateur Night

Hearst: You will not mistake the newspaper man: he looks like a... big turtle.

Silas Adams: Horsemen come to camp by torchlight last night.

Cy Tolliver: Tell Al as we didn’t wake to the apocalypse, I suppose all we need fear is their Winchesters.

Morgan: They have their fuckin' fun with you, and in the morning, they treat you like dirt.

Wyatt: [chuckles] And you a fucking virgin...

Morgan: No, and not pretending to be.

Wyatt: ...to be wounded by her callous ways.

Morgan: All I’m saying is she could have been nicer, and those steerers more fuckin' polite.

Hugo Jarry: Washington harasses us for our difficulties in distribution to the Indians, thereby distracting the nation at large from Washington’s own fiscal turpitudes and miasms.

Silas: There amongst the turpitudes and miasms, you got caught stealing the money.

Hugo Jarry: The money was not stolen. There was an amount of siphoning off and certain irregularlities.

Silas: Sounds like it was regular as milking Bessie, 96¢ on the dollar.

Hugo Jarry: Rank exaggeration.

Silas: If it was less than 90, you fucked generations of Indian agents to come.

Jane: Get out of my fucking light.

Mose: It’s me.

Jane: Who is me? The fucking eclipse?

Mose: Mose Manuel.

Jane: Oh, really? I thought it — it was Giganto, the runaway circus elephant.

Mose: Miss Stubbs has been looking for you. Those kids need chaperoning to the new schoolhouse, Jane. [Jane turns away and puts her hands to her ears, shutting her eyes.] Get up and walk them kids.

Jane: Okay, Giganto! Don’t tusk me to death with your tusks. [steadies herself, sheathing her gun] How long do I have to assemble myself?

Mose: They’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.

Jane: Shut up.

A Constant Throb

George Hearst: Elections cannot inconvenience me. They ratify my will or I neuter them.

Al Swearengen: Tell E.B. nothing.

Richardson: I’ll just keep quiet.

Al Swearengen: No. Tell E.B. nothing’s going on and then tell him, "If I wanted to tell you anything, I’d have told you. Don’t send the imbecile over with no more notes."

Richardson: I can’t remember all that.

Al Swearengen: Can you remember "Nothing’s going on"?

Richardson: Yes.

Al Swearengen: Tell him that, then.

George Hearst: Have you smelt human flesh on the spit?

E.B.: How would I have?

George Hearst: I know the smell.

E.B.: You have been to and fro in the world.

George Hearst: It pleased me to find out.

Al Swearengen: How well do you know the other guy?

Pinkerton: Who would that be?

Al Swearengen: That my man Dority killed. The Captain.

Pinkerton: We served in the 69th in New York.

Al Swearengen: Was that a mick regiment?

Pinkerton: Yeah. What were you doing?

Al Swearengen: Cutting throats.

Pinkerton: I was asking whose flag you were under.

Al Swearengen: The famous cocksuckers brigade.

Pinkerton: Is that so?

Al Swearengen: Command of the all-whore detachment. Distress you, when my man downed your friend?

Pinkerton: Let me tell you something, Mr. Swearengen. You don’t scare me, and you don’t fucking know what happened with the 69th New York. I will tell you this: I didn’t like what happened to Joe Turner. Mr. Hearst came to him and said, "Make it last, even if you gain the upper hand and can kill him." And I think that was halfway selfish of Mr. Hearst, whereas Joe could have killed your man and didn’t, and look how it wound up. But that’s as much as I feel like saying, and that’s neither here nor fucking there.

The Catbird Seat

Al Swearengen: Knowing him for an errant maniac, I’ll still not believe Bullock doubts me.

Al Swearengen: [reading a telegram from Hawkeye] "23 men hired, all on our way." This squaw-fuckin’ idiot. Proves in eight words he’s incompetent and a fuckin’ liar. He can’t have got Adams’ telegram more than four hours ago, yet he expects me to believe that in four hours he can prudently assess the qualities of 23 hires. And you know what "on our way" means, huh?

Blazanov: No.

Al Swearengen: "On our way" means they’re getting drunk and blown in some saloon in Cheyenne and running their mouths about the big fuckin’ filibustering expedition they’re being commissioned for under the command of the famous Hawkeye; the laziest, most shit-faced whore-mongering cocksucker to ever piss my money away!

Jack Langrishe: The man I once was, Al, was not formidable, and I am but his shadow now. And yet I’d be put to use. A decoy, perhaps. A weight to drop on villains from above.

Hearst: I oughtn't to work in these places. I was not born to crush my own kind.

Al Swearengen: [to his whores, pointing at a sleeping man] Rouse him to spend on pussy, or rob the son of a bitch.

Tell Him Something Pretty

Adams: When he ain't lyin', Al's the most honourable man you'll ever meet.

Hearst: Have the gold seen to [Alma's] bank, Newman. Have its purity assayed. Let her or her seconds choose the man. When that tedium is completed, have the documents witnessed as though we were all of us Jews. And bring the business back to me. [turns to leave] Excuse my absence, Mr. Star, as I hope you’ll forgive my thoughtless aspersion on your race. [Sol nods.] You stand for local office, but some contests being countywide, I await wires from the other camps. [holds the door open and Alma turns to leave. Hearst sniffs as she passes by.] You’ve changed your scent.

Seth Bullock: Can’t shut up! Every bully I ever met can’t shut his fuckin’ mouth... except when he’s afraid.

Hearst: You mistake for fear, Mr. Bullock, what is in fact preoccupation. I’m having a conversation you cannot hear.

Rutherford: Right to vote shall not be abridged or denied... [drinks]... on account of race or color or condition of previous servitude. 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified 1870, law of the land thereafter, including territories.

A Pinkerton: They got something about niggers not waiting their turn?

Rutherford: Not that I’m aware of.

A Pinkerton: Oh, you ain’t aware of it? Then I guess you’ll want this white man voting first?

Fields: What’s a few minutes more?

Charlie Utter: The nigger was before him.

A Pinkerton: No he wasn’t.

Charlie Utter: I guess you’re blind and stupid.

Fields: I believe I’ll vote later.

Charlie Utter: Fuck if you will. Get your nigger ass back in line.

A Pinkerton: [to Fields] You’d better be walking him home afterwards. [pulls on his collar and gags]

Charlie Utter: You’d better see to that yourself, ‘cause if he don’t make it, you’ll be eating your spuds runnin' till I hunt you the fuck down.

Al Swearengen: [talking to the Indian head in the box] This fuckin' place is gonna be a fuckin' misery. Every fuckin' one of them, every fuckin' time I walk by, "Ooh, how could you? How could you?" With their big fuckin' cow eyes. The entire fuckin' gaggle of ‘em is gonna have to bleed and quit before we can even hope for peace. What’s the fuckin' alternative? I ain’t fuckin’ killing her that sat nights with me sick and takin' slaps to her mug that were some less than fuckin' fair. I should have fuckin' learned to use a gun, but I’m too fuckin' entrenched in my ways. And you ain’t exactly the one to be levelin' criticisms on the score of being slow to adapt. You fuckin' people are the original slow fuckin' learners!

Charlie Utter: You done fuckin' good.

Seth Bullock: I did fuckin' nothin.'

Charlie Utter: That's often the tough one, in aid of the larger purpose.

Seth Bullock: Which is layin' head to pillow and not confusin' yourself with a sucker?

Charlie Utter: Far as I ever get.

Seth Bullock: 'Cause that's gonna be a project tonight.

Quoternity