Emma Thompson credited as playing...
Susan Stanton
- Susan Stanton: Your grandfather was a great man. Jack Stanton could also be a great man, if he wasn't such a faithless, thoughtless, disorganized, undisciplined shit.
- Susan Stanton: Isn't that the thing experience teaches you? Not to get burned?
- Henry Burton: Does anyone ever learn that?
- Susan Stanton: Not the best people.
- Richard Jemmons: Say you're out in the woods takin' a shit... and a wild boar comes chargin' at ya. Now, do you pull up your britches and run? Or do you try to pull your britches up and grab the doves you just shot, and then try to run, all at the same time? Or, do you just forget about the fuckin' doves, pull your britches up and run, 'cause you ain't got time to aim and button your fly? And if you miss, well... you don't want to die with your dick hangin' out. You see what I'm sayin'?
- Susan Stanton: I think I speak for everyone in the room when I say no.
- [discussing the need for an internal investigator so the campaign can anticipate and respond to negative press coverage]
- Susan Stanton: What are you suggesting we do? How would you deal with it?
- Daisy: By knowing more than they do. By being prepared, so when a story like Chicago comes up, we can fight back with the truth.
- Lucille Kaufman: That's impossible. How are we supposed to know what kind of garbage they're gonna come up with?
- Richard Jemmons: Well, that's the point, Lucille. That's the whole ever-fuckin' point. We need to hire an operative to do research, you see what I mean? We need somebody that can get at...
- Susan Stanton: Investigate our lives.
- Richard Jemmons: Investigate everything anybody can make an allegation about.
- Lucille Kaufman: Well, that's ridiculous. We don't play that game. That's the media's game. We play the people's game. We say to them, "The Republicans and the media, they want the election to be about trash. We want it to be about your future." We don't shoot doves in this campaign, Richard. We protect them.
- Richard Jemmons: [confused] What do you mean?
- Lucille Kaufman: Well, don't the doves represent the people?
- Richard Jemmons: No.
- Lucille Kaufman: Well, then I don't understand who the doves are.
- Susan Stanton: Forget the doves.
- [Susan and Lucille are leaving the conference room]
- Lucille Kaufman: Then are we the doves?
- Susan Stanton: Lucille, I think we can forget the metaphor.
- [the door closes, leaving Richard, Henry, and Daisy in the conference room]
- Richard Jemmons: Actually, I think we're the ones takin' a shit in the woods.