- John Cerruti: I'm so glad you're here! I receive so few outsiders. Who to trust? Who to trust? All of the nerves, but none of the flesh.
- Pa Kegan: I'm all that's standing between you and darkest night, son. The other side of me, there's Chaos.
- John Cerruti: Your father spent eleven million dollars to raise your brother up from a skirt-chasing college-boy to President of the United States. For twenty years he told him what to do and how and why he was gonna do it and what would happen when it was done. Your father put Tim in the White House - why? Because that's where you can generate the most cash; a cold-ass business proposition, like everything else in this society. But your brother decided to stir up the population. Began to think we were all living in a democracy, he started believing it. Lunch with the De Gaulles, dinner with Khrushchev, the whole razzle-dazzle went to his head. Yet in spite of the fact that everybody out there in this country lives in the same dog-eat-dog way, grabbing any angle to make a buck, if you were to inform them that your father had Tim killed, they'd wanna tear the old man apart, limb from limb.
- Nick Kegan: Why won't you marry me?
- Yvette Malone: You hardly know me.
- Nick Kegan: We see each other, I talk to you all the time.
- Yvette Malone: You talk to my machine.
- Nick Kegan: Ah so what, I can tell the difference!
- Yvette Malone: That's a beginning.
- Nick Kegan: I'm making an honest proposal of marriage!
- Yvette Malone: Tell you what. I'll give you a copy of my answering machine tape and you can take it with you.
- Nick Kegan: Come on, don't toy with me.
- Yvette Malone: I'm serious!
- Nick Kegan: We'll have this huge wedding at Saint Patrick's Cathedral!
- Yvette Malone: Saint Patricks? What if I'm Jewish?
- Nick Kegan: That doesn't matter. Pa knows the cardinal.
- Yvette Malone: You see darling? You know nothing about me.
- Nick Kegan: I know all I need to know!
- Yvette Malone: You know what? That you're in love with my answering machine?
- Z.K. Dawson: Why should I kill your brother when I'm getting rich off him? Off his military spending, his space spending, his tax reduction and his - his crisis spending? Hell, you know, if your old man didn't own him already, I might've bought him myself, except for his snotty personality.
- Pa Kegan: I got sixty million bucks riding on that ship, kiddo, and you leave her like a Friday-night hooker.
- Z.K. Dawson: You think before you speak, young man! Jesus, they didn't teach you kids nothin' since 1944.
- Keifitz: You were just a little boy when President Kegan was gunned down in Philadelphia, but, in the subsequent 19 years, more than 16 people who seemingly had nothing to do with that awful event have died under mysterious conditions.
- Pa Kegan: Looks like you were telling the truth.
- Nick Kegan: Truth? Pa, I'm your son.
- Pa Kegan: Ah, you always had an excitable imagination. For a while, as a boy, I was afraid you might turn out to be a fag.
- Nick Kegan: You're a real winner, Pa.
- Pa Kegan: You ain't a piano player, you ain't an artist. You got no business sense, no political sense. What the hell do you want anyway? Where are your values in life?
- Nick Kegan: I honestly don't know.
- Pa Kegan: Do you get laid? I ask you, do you get laid?
- Nick Kegan: Yeah.
- Pa Kegan: Do you know how many times your brother got laid when he was in office?
- Nick Kegan: What are you, the 'National Inquirer'?
- Pa Kegan: One thousand seventy-two, and with a schedule like his.
- Nick Kegan: I think I'm going to leave.
- Yvette Malone: If you want to. I have a friend coming over if you'd like to meet her.
- Nick Kegan: Friend? Who?
- Yvette Malone: Patty! She's from the magazine. You'd dig her.
- Nick Kegan: Dig her? What does that mean?
- Yvette Malone: Whatever you want it to mean. God, you're just like the others!
- Nick Kegan: Others. How many are there?
- Yvette Malone: Fewer and fewer.
- Nick Kegan: Oh, I get it. You're into women.
- Yvette Malone: I am a woman.
- Nick Kegan: You know what I'm talking about.
- Yvette Malone: Nope, and I won't marry a person I can't understand.
- Nick Kegan: Goodnight.
- Yvette Malone: Call the machine whenever you want, darling. It only goes one way.
- Captain Heller One: Where were you on February 22, 1960?
- John Kullers: Nineteen-sixty? What is this?
- Captain Heller One: You don't remember the date President Kegan was shot?
- John Kullers: Long Island... in school... Mrs. Sayer's eighth grade English class.
- Z.K. Dawson: Your brother was a miserable cold-assed son of a bitch, and not a good friend of mine - as I guess is well known to you.
- Z.K. Dawson: What I ought to do is run right over you, flatten you like a waffle.
- Nick Kegan: Sir?
- Z.K. Dawson: I know why you're here. You're here because you think I had some part of a conspiracy killed your brother. You and all the other conspiracy lovers in this conspiracy-loving country.
- Nick Kegan: I'd like to take a look at Pa's copy of the full Pickering Report.
- Keith: That will only make you sad.
- Nick Kegan: Sad? Now, you once told me all knowledge was good.
- Keith: I don't recall. Actually, that not something I would say.
- Pa Kegan: What am I gonna do with these girls, Mr. Secretary? First they're hot, then they're cold.
- Secretary of State: When she's hot again, send her over.
- Second Blonde Girl: I'm always hot.
- Nick Kegan: Get a hold of Miles Garner in Philly. Have him meet me at the airport with some long underwear. It'll be freezing there.
- Nick Kegan: We need help in this.
- Pa Kegan: Help? Like who? The CIA? They smuggle my cigars from Havana, that's what they do. Import, export.
- Pa Kegan: Spent a lot of money in that state. I mean, over-the-counter, under-the-table, tucked-into-a-box-of-cigars money.
- Pa Kegan: My International Vice President, John Cerruti, has files on the high and mighty, and the low and ornery, that make the CIA record look like a corner newsstand. Information's power. And now we're gonna use it.
- Pa Kegan: You won't need the vet.
- Nick Kegan: The vet?
- Pa Kegan: Yeah, the vet for Cocoa. Your mother passed out last night and smothered the mutt in her sleep.
- Nick Kegan: Oh, no.
- Pa Kegan: Yeah. Sleeps with the damn dog. Crazy woman.
- Nick Kegan: You're bringing the confession to the President?
- Pa Kegan: Hell, no. That moron can't read to find the men's room.
- Yvette Malone: Why complicate things? We have great sex, freedom, no kids, no responsibilities. Why duplicate the messes others make?
- Nick Kegan: Well, we don't have to.
- Yvette Malone: You mean we can make a mess of our own?
- Nick Kegan: Who knows what'll happen?
- Nick Kegan: [on the phone] I got something to tell you. I can't believe you're real!
- Yvette Malone: Yeah, well, I'm not real. I'm just a more complicated new machine.
- Nick Kegan: You're what?
- Yvette Malone: You come on over and see what this new machine can do.
- Pa Kegan: Here's a map on how to get there. He's south of Tulsa. It's all arranged. Take it. Take it!
- Nick Kegan: Okay, Pa. For the family.
- Yvette Malone: I can't.
- Nick Kegan: Don't say you can't. Say you don't want.
- Yvette Malone: I don't want.
- Nick Kegan: Get me a double, please, Raymond.
- Raymond-The Butler: A double what, sir?
- Nick Kegan: Uh, on second thought, make it triple.
- Raymond-The Butler: A triple what, sir?
- Nick Kegan: [on the phone] Hello. This is Nick Kegan. A maid just left my room. Have security stop her, please. She tried to kill me.
- Nick Kegan: You know, Tim - He had thousands of women, and I've, uh, I've actually only had 12. And I know that may seem conservative to you.
- Yvette Malone: Oh, listen, honey. You get me this story, I'll get you all you want.
- Pa Kegan: I forgot. You're the boy scout of the family. Tim always shared information on his broads.
- Nick Kegan: I'm not Tim.
- Irving Mentor: Joe skipped to Cuba. And by the time the boys found him, he was in bed with every faygeleh politician in Havana.
- Nick Kegan: You must have a record of her.
- Receptionist: Sir, this is National magazine. Everything we must have, we have.
- Keifitz: They will run you dizzy. They will pile falsehood on top of falsehood, until you can't tell a lie from the truth and you won't even want to. That's how the powerful keep their power. Don't you read the papers?
- Keifitz: It's a conundrum. Riddles within riddles.
- Nick Kegan: Now Yvette's gone.
- Keifitz: That broad we met in Paris?
- Keifitz: You've got to accept that there is a world outside of *you* - and that you affect that world.
- John Cerruti: From our satellite, we can watch everything. Nasty little wars in Africa. Troop movements. Ship movements. Nuclear tests. The Sinai. The Panama Canal. Every little thing to check an investment, buy us in or out.
- Keifitz: Pa's awareness is global.
- Nick Kegan: Yeah, so is mud.
- Keifitz: Nick, use him. Use the organization. He's got more clout than the Common Market - and you're taking the advice of a broad who's probably a plant.
- Keifitz: Go to Cerruti. He works for you, remember?
- Nick Kegan: What about you?
- Keifitz: I'm gonna stay dead for awhile. I feel healthier that way.
- John Cerruti: This is the contract silo, Nick. Contracts, contracts, contracts. Agreements kept. Agreements broken. Papers, papers, papers. Signatures. Your father's holograph signature. On his interlocking companies going back, oh, 30 years. Also those of diplomats, authors and inventors. Tax deals. Foundation deals. Signatures of presidents and sheiks. Signatures to put men away for, oh, decades. Destroy careers, public lives, marriages, estates. Love affairs. Letters of passion, indiscretion and conspiracy. Acquired by your father's intelligence network. Letters to persuade a man to close a deal or leave a job or sell out on his brother. Data necessary to sustain a financial empire.