Nicholas Pileggi > Quotes

“For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Goodfellas: Screenplay

“By birth, certainly, they were not prepared in any way to achieve their desires. They were not the smartest kids in the neighborhood. They were not born the richest. They weren’t even the toughest. In fact, they lacked almost all the necessary talents that might have helped them satisfy the appetites of their dreams, except one—their talent for violence.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“Of course, no matter how Henry tried to rationalize what he had done, his survival depended upon his capacity for betrayal. He willingly turned on the world he knew and the men with whom he had been raised with the same nonchalance he had used in setting up a bookie joint or slipping a tail. For Henry Hill giving up the life was hard, but giving up his friends was easy.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“When stolen securities got big, we used to have Wall Street types all over the place buying up bearer bonds. They would send them overseas, where the banks didn’t know they were stolen, and then they’d use the hot bonds as collateral on loans in this country. Once the stolen bonds were accepted as collateral, nobody ever checked their serial numbers again. We’re talking about millions of dollars in collateral forever. We got robbed on those jobs. At that time we didn’t have any idea about collateralizing foreign loans. The bankers took us to the cleaners. We got pennies for the dollar.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“Las Vegas was a city with no memory.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“On one occasion Jimmy is said to have given the elderly, impoverished mother of a young hood five thousand dollars. The woman’s son was said to have owed his mother the money but had refused to pay her. Jimmy was apparently so incensed at this lack of regard for motherhood that he gave the woman the five thousand in the morning, claiming it was from her son, and then allegedly killed the woman’s son before dusk.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“That’s what the FBI can never understand—that what Paulie and the organization offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can’t go to the cops. They’re like the police department for wiseguys. For instance, say I’ve got a fifty-thousand-dollar hijack load, and when I go to make my delivery, instead of getting paid, I get stuck up. What am I supposed to do? Go to the cops? Not likely. Shoot it out? I’m a hijacker, not a cowboy. No. The only way to guarantee that I’m not going to get ripped off by anybody is to be established with a member, like Paulie. Somebody who is a made man. A member of a crime family. A soldier. Then, if somebody fucks with you, they fuck with him, and that’s the end of the ball game. Goodbye. They’re dead, with the hijacked stuff rammed down their throats, as well as a lot of other things. Of course problems can arise when the guys sticking you up are associated with wiseguys too. Then there has to be a sit-down between your wiseguys and their wiseguys. What usually happens then is that the wiseguys divide whatever you stole for their own pockets and send you and the guy who robbed you home with nothing. And if you complain, you’re dead.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family

“The federal prosecutors were asking him about his role in the $6 million Lufthansa German Airlines robbery, the largest successful cash robbery in American history.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“It was a time when just being suspected of cooperating with the government was enough to get you killed. And even if you didn’t cooperate and got a long stretch in prison, you could still be in danger, because now you could be perceived as far more vulnerable to the government’s sweet deals. “I’ve heard them go around a room,” Cullotta said. “‘Joe, whadda you think of Mike?’ ‘Mike’s great. Balls like iron.’ ‘Larry, whadda you think of Mike?’ ‘Mike? A fuckin’ marine. To the end.’ ‘Frankie, whadda do you think of Mike?’ ‘Mike? You kidding? Mike’d put his arm in fire for ya.’ ‘Charlie, whadda you think of Mike?’ ‘Why take a chance?’ And that’s the end of Mike. That’s the way it happens.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“Henry was never able to help McDonald crack Lufthansa—the”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“Paulie didn’t believe in conferences. He didn’t want anyone hearing what he said, and he didn’t even want anyone listening to what he was being told.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“Lefty’s lawyer got the indictment thrown out because John Mitchell, the attorney general at the time, had failed to personally sign the case’s wiretap orders, as required by law. Mitchell had been out on a golf course the day the court orders were to have been signed and had instructed an aide to forge his name.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“I had a drugstore wholesaler who had discount stores all over Long Island.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Wiseguy

“The Frank Rosenthal Show began in April 1977 and appeared erratically thereafter at eleven P.M. on Saturday night for two years. At one point, the local television columnist Jim Seagrave of the Valley Times, writing about its unpredictable irregularity, referred to it as the Where’s Frank?”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“Garmisa?”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“contendere”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“It should have been so sweet,” Frank Cullotta said. “Everything was in place. We were given paradise on earth, but we fucked it all up.” It would be the last time street guys were ever given anything that valuable again.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“Before his car was blown up outside Marie Callender’s Restaurant on East Sahara Avenue on October 4, 1982, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal had been one of the most powerful and controversial men in Las Vegas.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“Like many men who come noisily to public life—like Donald Trump and George Steinbrenner, to take two other examples—he began to crave the spotlight.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas

“Then, after we’d rob them and scare them, they’d run to Tony for protection to get us off their backs. They never had any idea it was Tony who sent us over to rob them in the first place.”
― Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas