- “Cause I don’t give a fuck about the problems. I don’t give a fuck. Cause I don’t give a fuck about whatever Carlo does, or anybody else does or says, or anything like that. It’s just fucking noise. It’s just fucking noise, and this is where the music is - right here. And I’m here for the music, Juno. I’m here for the fucking music. I’m not gonna explain to you, like you’re cashing in receipts or something, about how I feel or why I feel. I’m here to feel. [pause] Fuck the world. ”
- “How long have you felt this, hmm? That it’s a weight? How long ago was it when you lost that spark that love is? Because, it’s not. You don’t have to know or define love in order to understand it when it comes around, because it’s easy to understand. It’s easy. It’s almost like breathing because that’s how effortless it is. You don’t even notice, but it just– It becomes a sort of… drug – an ecstasy of sorts. Nobody defines love and then finds it. So at some point in time, you must have felt that this love was real with this person. That the whole world was about that feeling. And then, it stopped being that, and it became a weight. It was no longer an ecstasy, it was… it was a poison. And you have to know when that happened. When did that happen? How long have you been carrying a poisonous feeling with you – a toxic thing in your heart? How long has it– how long has it been?”
- "One of the thing's my father taught me.. love is the most powerful in this world. This life, it's the most powerful thing. Love can solidify an empire as much as it can destroy it. Love can create life and love can end it. It's a dangerous thing, really, at the end of the day. In the wrong hands, love can drive a person to do wildly illogical things like betray their family. For the longest time I was scared of it, scared of what it would make me do. Once I really felt it, once I knew it was real.. then when it hit me it was just.. I wasn't scared at all. It almost felt liberating. Like I finally knew, you know? Got a taste of that.. thing that was made out to be so dangerous to me. And my first instinct was to share it. I mean, why not? Why would I keep such a beautiful thing to myself? I don't know if I'm going to be alive tomorrow, next week, a month from now, next year.. why would I take love and carry it to my grave? Wouldn't that just be a waste?
- "You feel like you've never been loved or at least if somebody has said it before it wasn't a genuine feeling or genuine love. You've convinced yourself that you don't deserve it or you're not worthy of it or you're just simply not capable of being loved. And when confronted the possibility of you not only being loved but loving in return, you panic. You deny it to yourself. You reject it. Like the concept is going to do you more harm if you acknowledge it. Because you've been hurt before. You don't want to be hurt again. You're probably afraid of other things too, but love is in there. With good reason, I might add."
- "Listen to me, if you do fall in love.. and I won't hold it against you if you do. But if you do fall in love remember, all of this, everything we do Fredo, leads back to us. All of it. If that means you gotta break your own fucking heart at the end of the day, be prepared for it like I am. Capisci?"
- "You're right everything would be bleak. Everything would be dumb. It all honestly would be black and white. There would be no colour left in the world. No music, no sound, no real shape or form of anything. It would just be endless, endless, pointlessness. An ugly monstrous rumbling of noise that just never ever took shape or form of anything meaningful. At least nothing meaningful that would cause or generate happiness."
- "Right now my brother and I own nothing. We have nothing. Everything that we are in 'control' of now are things that have been handed to us through the graces of others. Direct ownership? Nothing, besides from our personal assets. Little Italy does not belong to us. Little Italy can be taken away from us at a moment's notice, at any point in time. If we were to make a mistake, step the wrong way, piss the wrong person off? It's all gone. All of it. That is no way to set up a foundation. I'm not saying that those things will happen by the way. In fact, I doubt it very much. That at any point in time that we would lose things like Little Italy and anything else that we pride ourselves in controlling. But the fact of the matter is, we don't control it. We don't really own it. We manage it. That's what we do, we manage Little Italy. It's not ours. My interest is in getting away from that predicament. My interest is in making sure that an organization exists that stands on it's own two feet. That is ours, really. Ours. That we own it. That our people own it. That has been built from the bottom up, not from the graces of somebody else but through our own work. That we are the ones that have laid those bricks. That is the broader organization that I'm talking about. That is what I want. And this right here, is our first steps towards that. People building actual businesses that they own, running things the way they run them. And all of it at the end of the day, coming back together into that broader organization. I want something, envision something that is more than just Little Italy. Yes, it includes Batta-Boom, it includes Mamma Mia's meats, it includes the security company. And yes it will also include some gangbanging bullshit but I also want it to include political power, corporate power, economic power. I want people in the mayorship, I want people in the highest positions in any companies within the city. I want people in the streets in the southside. I want people working legal jobs all over the city, so when the time comes when we need to do something to exert our influence over the city, we have people everywhere. Everywhere. In all aspects of life. That's the organization that I'm talking about. And that is what I want you to be apart of."
- “Honestly, you’re the best thing that’s happened. We are the best thing that’s happened. Yeah, I might be hurting for reasons that I can’t even explain to you. But at the end of the day - what is gonna heal my wounds is you. It’s us.”
- “Juno, I can be with a cannibal, I can be with a murderer, I can be with a lot of different kinds of people - but I cannot and will not be with a junkie. Please understand that.”
- "It doesn't matter what I saw you as. It's doesn't matter. I didn't know you. Everything is a politics game in this fucking city when you don't know anybody. Everything is."
- "Everybody has selfish interests in their relationship's with other people. Everybody. Whether it be material, whether it be emotional, whether it be financial, everybody has selfish interests. The fact of the matter is Juno, is that you are - whether you admit it or not, interested in the emotional stability that I provide to you. That's a selfish reason and there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. You're gonna tell me I'm wrong? You want to play this game about what it is people are interested in each other? If I was interest in you politically, for whatever reason - what would I get? Politically? Hmm? Why would you cast a doubt on that? What am I getting politically? From you?"
- [Referring to Vito's world view] "It can be manipulative you're right. It can be. When you become aware of the reality of it. Because the truth of the matter is Juno - interpersonal politics, like the way I'm talking about them... 90% of the time when it comes to personal things like this, these things happen subconsciously. You're not aware of you doing it. Once you become aware of it, yes, it can be weaponized. 100%. But becoming aware of it or not aware of it doesn't mean it's not happening."
- [Explaining Juno's subconscious attempts at emotional manipulation] "But subconsciously, what you really wanted was for me to agree with you and say, 'You're right. I'm going to break off that relationship with Rod.' That's what you wanted. Now, the reason why I'm saying you're not aware of it is because it's happening subconsciously. You weren't aware that you were trying to emotionally manipulate me but you were trying to emotionally manipulate me. Everybody does this. Everybody on every level of society does this. We do it with our siblings, we do it with our parents, we do it with our lovers, we do it with people at work, we do it everybody. And everything in life, we emotional manipulate things, we emotionally send subconscious subliminal cues to people through social interactions to gain things from them. This is the definition of our interactions as human beings. We do this. Subconsciously. Everybody does. I'm not criticizing you. I'm not saying what you were doing was wrong and I'm upset about it - nothing like that. I'm not upset about it. The difference between you and me or me and perhaps other people? Is that I'm aware of those subliminal things, I know when they're happening and I can pinpoint them, I can tweak them, I can make them useful for myself. I don't always do it, it's not necessary for me to always do it but when I become aware of these things and I can play those strings - I will play them for my own manipulative personal gain. Absolutely, yes. That is my gun. Why does it upset you so much that I'm aware of it? This is a good thing. This is a good thing. I don't go around shooting people, I will play their strings instead."
- [Talking to Juno about the importance of family] "If my own family doesn't- if my own family betrays me then i'm not Vito DiCenzo and life is not worth living..." Juno asks if she's not enough "No Juno it's not enough, and don't take that the way i know you're taking it already." "How could i not take it that way?" "Because this is not about you! Stop tryna make this about you somehow..." "After saying that, how could i not ask that question?" "Well how could you not understand that what means the most to me in this life, Juno, is my family. And that without that then i'm a shell of a man... a shell of a man... a corpse walking around with no soul - A FUCKING ZOMBIE. I'd still have a heart and it would beat for you no doubt... but i would be a shell of a man, Juno. -I envy their ability to surrender parts of themselves or exchange them as if they were some, i don't know... modular robot or something. I wish i could see life and my family through that lens, it would make it so much easier to just not care enough, you know? But i am not other people, Juno, and i never will be."
- "My brother and I have different approaches to things. It's perhaps irreconcilable. But don't mistake my distance from him, my distance from Joe, my distance from everybody else in that family as us being at odds with each other. I will never under any circumstances work against the interests of the people that I love. Never work against the interest of my blood. I'm distancing myself from them because I feel that is the healthy choice right now. It'll perhaps put things in a better perspective for myself and for Luciano and Joe. Me leaving doesn't mean that I'm gone forever. It could, from certain things - but they're still my family Juno."
- "My brother and I have a loyalty to a trade that is ancient at this point. That trade includes a level of secrecry that is difficult for outsiders to understand. You could be a cop, a doctor, a gangbanger, you could be whatever you can imagine in this world if you are not blood and if you have not sworn by blood - you cannot and you will not know certain things. And that is not a judgement of your character. That does not mean that I would not trust you with the information. That does not mean that I value you less. What it means Juno, is that you are simply not apart of that. And by not being apart of it, you are excluded from knowing certain things. Period. So don't take offense by it. Trust me when I say if you are not apart of it, it is better that you do not know. And if I were to ever betray that Juno, then I would be betraying who I am, what I am and I would be betraying possibly a 100 years of oaths.. of blood."
|
