- Blair Sullivan: You're the first visitor I've had here in two years since them behavioral science boys come to see me. Wanna know about my childhood and shit. Did my folks beat me, abuse me, sex me up? I tried telling 'em there ain't no formula for people like me. What we are dealing with here is just predisposition for an appetite. Good parents, bad parents. No cause and effect. It's just appetite.
- Paul Armstrong: Fuck you.
- Blair Sullivan: [yelling] Let me tell you a few things, Armstrong! One, I'm filled with power! You might think I'm impotent prisoner, handcuffed and shackled, locked in a eight by seven cell each night and day, but I'm filled with strength that reaches way beyond these bars, sir! I can crush anyone I want to just as these hands dialing a telephone! There's no one beyond my reach! You hear me, no one!
- Paul Armstrong: Did you kill her?
- Blair Sullivan: I ain't gonna tell you if I killed that little girl or not. Even if I did, how would you know to believe me? Killing is easy for me. How hard do you think lying is?
- Paul Armstrong: Go to hell!
- Blair Sullivan: True. I will. No doubt about that!
- Paul Armstrong: Even if you don't have a condition, you might have a situation.
- Blair Sullivan: You a killer too?
- Paul Armstrong: Me? No.
- Blair Sullivan: You never been in a war?
- Paul Armstrong: No.
- Blair Sullivan: Korea? Vietnam? You ever do a little hit and run with the BMW? Never told the wifey to get an abortion? A little piece o' chicken on the side - here's $300 dollars doll face, get taken care of.
- McNair: [McNair was Bobby Earl's inefficient defence attorney] Regardless of what you may think of me, I did defend that boy to the very best of my abilities. And, boy, has it cost me. Hell, I lost half of my business from defending that son-of-a-bitch. And he got the chair. You have any idea what my life would be like if I had gotten him acquitted?
- Bobby Earl: Tanny Brown's one of those niggers who likes being a big fish in a small...
- Paul Armstrong: He's black?
- Bobby Earl: Oh, yes.
- [laughs]
- Bobby Earl: Yes sir. You see, this is the New South. Now they got black cops to come and torment your black ass.
- [Sarcastically]
- Bobby Earl: It's called affirmative action.
- [first lines]
- Bobby Earl: Hey, you want my money, you best start throwing some elbow into that, boy. A dollar fifty, that's two bits shy of a car wash.
- Kid Washing Car #1: A dollar fifty *each*.
- Bobby Earl: Oh man, now you must got me confused with some other idiot.