Little Caesar quotes

“

Yeah? Great, but careless. He’ll never die of old age.

”

Rico was standing in front of his mirror, combing his hair with a little ivory pocket comb. Rico was vain of his hair. It was black and lustrous, combed straight back from his low forehead and arranged in three symmetrical waves.

Rico was a simple man. He loved but three things: himself, his hair and his gun. He took excellent care of all three.

“

Sam, you get funny with me and you won’t get no split at all. Only a horseshoe wreath.

”

Rico tore up this clipping.

“Where do they get that unhealthy stuff!” he said. “I never been sick a day in my life.”

“How did Little Arnie take it?” asked the Big Boy.

“He took it standing up,” said Blondy Belle.

“Well, what could he do?” said Rico.

When he sat in a chair he never thrust out his feet and lolled, but sat rigid and alert. He walked, ate, took his pleasures in the same manner. What distinguished him from his associates was his inability to live in the present.

He was like a man on a long train journey to a promised land. To him the present was but a dingy way-station; he had his eyes on the end of the journey.

Rico leapt out of bed and hastily put on his clothes.

“Why bring that up?” said Willoughby.

Rico had an instinctive respect for wealth. Money was power.

He smiled affably, and offered his hand.

“Yeah? Look at Tony. He turned soft and they patted him with a spade.

Once a guy turns soft he ain’t no good in this world.

Didn’t Humpy get soft on Red Gus and turn State’s? Yeah! Who got the neck stretching? Red Gus. Humpy got fifteen years and he’ll be out in half of that.”

“Sure,” said the Big Boy, “that’s the real thing. Only what the hell, I say!

A plate’s to eat off, ain’t it? What’s the odds what it’s made of?

But I got a spell about two years ago. I had a pot full of money and I thought, well, other guys that ain’t got as much dough as I got put on a front, so why shouldn’t I?

He was nobody, nobody. Worse than nobody. The bulls wanted him now and they wanted him bad. Goodbye dollar cigars and crockery at one grand, goodbye swell food and tuxedos and security.

Rico was nobody. Just a lonely Youngstown yegg that the bulls wanted.

His face was ghastly.

Cesare Bandello, known as Rico, the Vettori gang chief, was named as the actual slayer of Courtney. …

“Yeah,” said Rico, “and I’m the only one they ain’t gonna get.”

He had his neck to think about, and there was Sansotta, a good guy, doing what he could for him.

Rico kept saying to himself, you are nobody, nobody, but it was galling.

Sometimes he would go to his room early and just sit in the dark and think. He would imagine himself in the Big Boy’s wonderful apartment;

Then he went over in his mind the robbery of the Casa Avarado and all the steps which had led to his own rise and fall.

“It made me and it broke me,” he said.

On New Year’s Eve, Rico dressed up more than usual and went down into Sansotta’s cabaret. It was jammed, and unable to get a seat he went into Sansotta’s office and had one of the waiters bring him a meal.

Sometimes there would be a big poker game and he would sit in. He was known as “Youngstown Louis” and nobody in the place had the slightest idea who he really was.

Everything was against Rico. The very virtues that had been responsible for his rise were liabilities in his present situation.

He had no outlet for his energy; the self-discipline which had marked him out from his fellows was of no use to him here;