- Jake Gittes: What I do for a living may not be very reputable... but I am. In this town I'm the leper with the most fingers.
- Jake Gittes: I wouldn't extort a nickel from my worst enemy. That's where I draw the line.
- Loach Jr.: Well, I'll tell you, Jake. I knew a whore once. For the right amount of money, she'd piss in a guy's face. But she wouldn't shit on his chest. You see, that's where she drew the line.
- Jake Gittes: Well, Junior, all I can say is: I hope she wasn't too much of a disappointment to you.
- Jake Berman: You know something, Jake, you might think you know what's going on around here, but... you don't.
- Jake Gittes: I did my share of fighting in the war and even got a medal, but Lou lost a leg with the first Marines at Guadalcanal. He knows about regrets and how life doesn't give you a fair shake. You can't trust a guy who's never lost anything.
- Khan: You are very successful.
- Jake Gittes: Oh, I can't complain.
- Khan: Does that mean you are happy?
- Jake Gittes: Who can answer that question off the top of their head?
- Khan: Anyone who's happy.
- Jake Gittes: You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which'll probably get you in trouble. Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth.
- Jake Berman: Where were we?
- Jake Gittes: Well, I was accusing you of murder, Mr. Berman.
- Jake Berman: Call me Jake.
- Jake Gittes: We're talkin' about oil here, right, Ty?
- Tyrone Otley: Obviously. Mr. Rawley believes there's oil under the subdivision. He's endangering hundreds of lives drilling under those homes, with all the seismic activity. He's whipstocking! Someone has got to stop him!
- Jake Gittes: Well, I can't do that, Ty. Nobody can. Guys like Rawley don't get arrested; they get streets named after them. In this type of situation, it's best just to leave it alone. Rawley's stealin' from Berman. It's a big thief stealin' from a little thief. Who are we to quarrel?
- Loach Jr.: Come on, Gittes. There you were, consorting with a known hoodlum under grand jury investigation... and known to be friendly with your client, Jake Berman.
- Jake Gittes: So, what?
- Loach Jr.: So, either you were doing business with Mickey, or, uh...
- Jake Gittes: Or what?
- Plainclothes Policeman: We got a vice officer who swears you approached him and fondled his privates in the men's room.
- [Loach breaks out laughing]
- Jake Gittes: [to Policeman] How was it for you?
- Jake Gittes: [narrating] The city's different at night: the air smells better, it's harder to see that the oil rigs outnumber the palm tress; it's almost like the good old days, at least the way I'd like to remember them. But stay in this business long enough and every street leads to a place you'd like to forget, every case brings back memories of what you should have done & what might have been, and every skirt reminds you of another woman... or, if you've got it bad enough, the same woman.
- Jake Gittes: Maybe I didn't tell the whole truth at the preliminary hearing, but there's one thing I learned about the truth... a little bit goes a long way.
- Jake Gittes: [looking at photos of mystery blonde] Did you follow her?
- Ralph Tilton: What for? You told me to follow Berman.
- Jake Gittes: Berman had a 2 o'clock appointment at his lawyer's, Ralph. You don't follow somebody when you know where they're goin'!
- Ralph Tilton: But you said STAY WITH Berman!
- Jake Gittes: [disgusted] Who the FUCK is this woman?
- Ralph Tilton: Who's THAT woman?
- Francis Hannah: Isn't it a fact, Mr. Gittes, that you're out on bail, having been arrested at the Green Parrot Bar & Grill?
- Cotton Weinberger: Wait a minute. Your Honor, the witness has been CHARGED, not convicted.
- Judge Alexander K. Dettmer: What's the charge?
- Francis Hannah: The charge?
- Judge Alexander K. Dettmer: YES. The charge.
- Francis Hannah: Well, that, uh, Mr. Gittes was fondling... the private parts of a vice officer in the Men's Room of the Green Parrot Bar & Grill.
- [gasps and laughter fill the court room]
- Cotton Weinberger: Objection, Your Honor.
- Judge Alexander K. Dettmer: I'm with you, Mr. Weinberger. I have NO idea what you thought you could do with this kind of evidence, Mr. Hannah. It certainly has no place in MY court room. Do yourself a favor. The next time, you be sure you've got a case. That's about it for this hearing.
- Jake Gittes: Hell, everybody makes mistakes. But if you marry one, they expect you to pay for it for the rest of your life. I don't care whose fault it is, his, hers or the milkman's.
- Jake Gittes: I should have been wise to Berman's hand-wringing act from the very beginning. It was as plain as the shoes on his feet.
- Plainclothes Policeman: We got a vice officer who swears you approached him and fondled his privates in the men's room.
- Jake Gittes: How was it?
- Jake Berman: You know who else couldn't buy a house here? Me. I can build it and I can sell it, just as long as I don't move in next door. They don't want Mexicans or Jews around. Let me tell you something else. The customer is always right.
- Jake Gittes: Honestly, I'm trying to be a gentleman about this. Now just, get down on your knees. Get down on your knees. Stick your ass up in the air. And don't move until I telly you.
- Walsh: Does that mean he wants you to prove your own client is guilty of murder?
- Jake Gittes: Yeah.
- Walsh: Well, 's that ethical?
- Jake Gittes: Larry, he's a lawyer.
- Jake Gittes: What business you got with Jake Berman?
- Michael 'Mickey Nice' Weisskopf: Jake Berman is 100% legitimate.
- Jake Gittes: What do you call legitimate?
- Michael 'Mickey Nice' Weisskopf: I can tell YOU what I DON'T consider legitimate.
- Jake Gittes: Must be a short list.
- Michael 'Mickey Nice' Weisskopf: Blackmail.
- Jake Gittes: I'm used to seein' the intimate details of people's lives, but lookin' at a guy's x-rays is as intimate as it gets. It's the kind of thing most guys don't even tell their wives about.
- Jake Gittes: When husbands and wives lie to each other, one of them comes to my office and lies to me. Frankly, if I waited for an honest client, I'd be sitting around until Rocky Graziano played Rachmaninoff at the Hollywood Bowl.
- Jake Gittes: Cotton.
- Cotton Weinberger: What?
- Jake Gittes: Thank you. Fuck you.
- Cotton Weinberger: Thank you, Jake. Always a pleasure doing business.
- Jake Gittes: Memories are like that - as unpredictable as nitro, and you never know what's gonna set one off.
- Jake Berman: I got a wife to protect.
- Jake Gittes: Protect? You mean divorce, don't you?
- Jake Berman: Yeah. That too. Yeah.
- Michael 'Mickey Nice' Weisskopf: Be a mensch. Otherwise, I'm going to have to give you a serious reprimand.
- Jake Gittes: Old Cactus Earl probably hoodwinked quite a few city boys with his Will Rogers routine, but I knew he wasn't talking about two horses on their honeymoon. Whatever Rawley was mounting, it wasn't a mare. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't me, either, pardner.
- Earl Rawley: Without my oil, you got no automobiles. Without automobiles, you got no road construction, no sidewalks, no city lights, no gas stations, no automotive service, and no Berman subdivision stuck out in the tules, because nobody can get there. Then Mr. Berman's out of business, before he even gets in business. The name of the game is oil, John.
- Captain Lou Escobar: How do you know he didn't have the gun with him?
- Jake Gittes: Oh, I'd never frisk him before I let him walk in on his wife hanging on the headboard while some guy was slammin' her into the wall, Lou!
- Kitty Berman: Does it ever go away?
- Jake Gittes: What's that?
- Kitty Berman: The past.
- Jake Gittes: Well, I think you have to work real hard at that.
- Jake Gittes: I know how edgy you must be, Julius, but...
- Jake Berman: My friends call me Jake.
- Jake Gittes: Well, that makes two of us. That's what my friends call me.
- Jake Berman: Is that right? Is that right? He's a Jake and I'm a Jake.
- Jake Gittes: Yeah. How about that? Two Jakes.
- Captain Lou Escobar: This is not a case where I want any difficulty for anybody. It's simple. A guy gets fucked getting fucked. Let's not get cute.
- Captain Lou Escobar: Then what happened?
- Jake Gittes: What usually happens when somebody pulls a gun. Everybody ducks.
- Jake Gittes: Cotton was right. We should have turned up B & B Homes. Maybe Berman's partner would still be chasing his wife instead of cooling his dick at the County Morgue.
- Lillian Bodine: Kitty Berman - she's a cold-hearted, frigid bitch. She and Jake were in this together.
- Jake Gittes: Look. When you get her back there, take her in through the window or the side door. Stay till she sobers up. Papers'll be jumping all over the lawn like flies.
- Jake Gittes: Time changes things. Like the fruit stand that turns into a filling station. But the footprints and signs from the past are everywhere. They've been fighting over this land ever since the first Spanish missionaries showed the Indians the benefits of religion, horses, and a few years of forced labor. The Indians had it right all along. They respected ghosts. You can't forget the past any more than you can change it.
- Jake Gittes: The clues that keep you on track are never where you look for them. They fall out of the pocket of somebody else's suit you pick up at the cleaners. They're in the tune you can't stop humming, that you never heard in your life. They're at the other end of the wrong number you dial in the middle of the night. The signs are in those old familiar places you only think you've never been before. But you get used to seeing them out of the corner of your eye, and you end up tripping over the ones that are right in front of you.
- Tyrone Otley: These earthquakes are shaking up our water wells like soda pop. Only it's not soda pop. Millions of gallons of water and gas under these homes. And it's gettin' hazardous.
- Jake Berman: What do you mean, hazardous?
- Tyrone Otley: It could explode.
- Jake Berman: You said it was marsh gas. I thought only natural gas was explosive.
- Tyrone Otley: Mr Berman, whether it comes from an old marsh or baked beans, all gas is natural. Gas is gas!
- Earl Rawley: Did you ever breed any horses?
- Jake Gittes: Can't say that I have, no.
- Earl Rawley: Well, it's sort of like helping a stallion mount a mare. Whipstocking is somethin' you do to coax the drilling bit in the right direction. After you've gone to all that time and trouble, you wouldn't want your big fella to miss what he was aimin' at. Now, would you?
- Earl Rawley: That's really none of my business.
- Jake Gittes: None of your business?
- Earl Rawley: Well, I suppose, in a sense, when you're in the oil business, you're in *everybody's* business.
- Lillian Bodine: Whips and stockings? God damn it. That son of a bitch was...
- Jake Gittes: Lillian, just calm down.
- Lillian Bodine: I always knew that Kitty was a perverted little snat!