- [Given a detective's gold badge]
- Frank Serpico: What's this for? For bein' an honest cop? Hmm? Or for being stupid enough to get shot in the face? You tell them that they can shove it.
- Frank Serpico: You know what they say, don't you? If you love a man's garden, you gotta love the man!
- Frank Serpico: You stupid fuck! You didn't know me? You fired without a warning, without a fucking brain in your head? Oh, shit. If I buy one, motherfucker, I ain't buying it from you.
- Frank Serpico: I'm a marked man in this department. For what?
- District Attorney Tauber: I've already arranged a transfer for ya.
- Frank Serpico: To where? China?
- Frank Serpico: I own a sheep dog.
- Girl: Uh-huh.
- Frank Serpico: Sheep dogs have been in my family... for sixteen generations! Dating back to the Borgias...
- Girl: [laughing] Oh, shit!
- Frank Serpico: The family crest... is the image of a sheep dog, pissing into a gondola.
- Girl: Shit!
- Gun shop owner: That gun takes a 14-shot clip. You expecting an army?
- Frank Serpico: No. Just a division.
- Tom Keough: Now I ain't sayin' who. They just said ya... ya couldn't be trusted, you know?
- Frank Serpico: 'Cause I don't take money, right?
- Tom Keough: Frank, let's face it. Who can trust a cop who don't take money?
- Frank Serpico: You know that I'm totally isolated in the department. I don't have a friend.
- Chief Sidney Green: Oh, don't give me that bullshit about friends. I've been putting cops away for thirty years. My name's an obscenity to every shithouse wall in every precinct in the city.
- Frank Serpico: I've observed that, sir.
- Chief Sidney Green: Friends! And I fought my way up as a Jew in the department in the days you were supposed to have an uncircumcised shamrock between your legs. I have this nightmare. I'm on 5th Avenue watching the St. Patrick's Day parade and I have a coronary and nine thousand cops march happily over my body.
- Larry: Leslie is a mindfucker.
- Frank Serpico: You gotta be kidding. I didn't know that. What's a mindfucker?
- Larry: Well, it's a chick who digs intellectual types and super bright guys.
- Frank Serpico: Oh, she's very perceptive.
- Don Rubello: [looking suspiciously at Frank's mouse] What's with the fucking mouse?
- Frank Serpico: He's my partner. He sniffs out drugs. You know, I just send him through his little hole, he's gone for a while, and then he comes back with the heroin.
- Don Rubello: Oh, yeah, I heard of that.
- Frank Serpico: You heard of that? Yeah.
- Leslie Lane: [feeling his gun as she's riding on the back of his motorcycle] What'ya need a gun for?
- Frank Serpico: Didya ever hear of Barnum and Bailey?
- Leslie Lane: Yeah.
- Frank Serpico: Well, I'm their lion tamer.
- Bob Blair: [to Frank] Who the fuck do you think you are, you son of a bitch? You think you have it bad just because those bastards won't play ball?
- Frank Serpico: You know, you're pretty fuckin' weird for a cop.
- Bob Blair: Me? What about *you*? You're a fucking hippie!
- Frank Serpico: Captain, I think it's only fair to tell you, I've been to outside agencies, and I'm gonna go to more if I have to.
- Capt. Insp. McClain: What outside agencies? Holy mother of God! Frank, we wash our own laundry around here! You're going to be brought up on charges for this.
- Frank Serpico: [they start to shout on top of each other] Oh yeah? Yeah, I always thought so, but the reality is, sir, that *we do not wash our own laundry*! It just gets dirtier.
- Capt. Insp. McClain: Oh, you are in trouble, Serpico. You are in trouble!
- Frank Serpico: I don't care if I'm in trouble, I don't care who gets it anymore, including myself. Because if I have to go to outside agencies to get somebody to hear my story...
- Capt. Insp. McClain: You stay away from outside agencies! Do you hear me, Serpico? Stay away from them!
- Frank Serpico: [screaming] Well, where am I gonna go? Where am I gonna go?
- Capt. Insp. McClain: Just wait until you hear from me! I don't want to talk to you, Frank.
- [turns and walks off]
- Frank Serpico: I've been waiting a year and a half for you. Where am I going to go?
- Frank Serpico: [shouting after the Captain] It's *my life*, you fuck!
- Rudy Corsaro: [being arrested by Serpico, who's having trouble finding his badge] Where have they been hidin' you, kid?
- Frank Serpico: Wouldn't you like to know?
- Cop: Serpico. Get in. You're not wired, are you? Okay, you cocksucker, you might get by in the Bronx with that kind of shit, but down here, eight hundred a month is chicken feed. Last week, one dope dealer sent out these guys making pickups. Forty thousand each. We let 'em collect it all - and then hit 'em. A hundred twenty thousand split four ways. That's serious money. And with that, you don't fuck around.
- Serpico: I got the message.
- Cop: Good. Now, get the fuck out.
- Laurie: Everybody knows about cops. Did you ever hear the story of the wise king?
- Serpico: Nope, but I got the feeling I'm gonna hear it.
- Laurie: Well, there was this king, and he ruled over his kingdom. Right in the middle of the kingdom there was a well. And that's where everybody drank. And one night, this witch came along and she poisoned the well. And the next day, everybody drank from it except the king and they all went crazy. They got together in the street and they said "We got to get rid of the king, 'cause the king is mad." And then that night, he went down and he drank from the well. And the next day all the people rejoiced, because their king had regained his reason.
- Serpico: I think you're trying to tell me somethin'.
- Laurie: Me?
- Barto: How long have you been with the BCI now, Serpico?
- Frank Serpico: All my life.
- Barto: That's long enough to know how we do things.
- Frank Serpico: Barto, it's not just that.
- [in a sarcastic tone]
- Frank Serpico: You don't like me!
- Barto: BCI never had a weirdo cop before.
- Frank Serpico: Barto, stop buggin' me!
- Frank Serpico: Hey, Pasquale, let me tell you something. See, all day long I work with cops, right? When I go out, I see Mary Ann. Her father is a cop, her brother is a cop, her uncle is a cop and I got a feeling she's a cop too.
- Serpico: All my life I wanted to be a cop, you know. It's like I can remember nothing else. I remember this one time--there was, eh, somethin' happened. A domestic argument or somethin'. Somebody stabbed somebody or somethin'. And - there was this crowd around this tenement. I must have been nine, ten years old. I was this big. I went over to see what was going on. I noticed the red light--goin' around and around, all these people, and I couldn't see. And I kept saying, "Do you know what's goin' on? Do you know?" Nobody knew. It was like a big mystery behind that--that crowd there. All of a sudden, the crowd just parted. Like the Red Sea, you see? And there were these guys in blue, and I said, "They know." What do they know? What do they know?
- Pat - a girl at party: You know, Japanese culture and theater and painting--it's too rigidly stylized.
- Serpico: Well, yeah, you know--Yeah, but, I think after a while, when you get through that, you start to--appreciate the clarity--you know, the authority.
- Tom Keough: You'd never hurt another cop, right? You'd never hurt another cop, would you, Frank?
- Serpico: Well, that'd depend on what he did.
- Tom Keough: That's the wrong answer, Frankie.
- Laurie: All I care about is you! That's all that matters to me. That's why it hurts so much. I can't stand to see you like this. Scared, miserable, dreading to go to work. It's tearing me apart! And then I get sick of hearing about it and I start hating myself.
- Serpico: You want to read something? It's about your pal Corsaro. Here, read it. Read it! He did 15 years. You know what for? For killing a cop. He's a fucking cop killer.
- Serpico: Police corruption cannot exist unless it is at least tolerated at higher levels in the department.
- Black informant: Would you bust whitey?
- Serpico: Try me. Try me.
- Black informant: This guy's heavy. He's Italian. Mobbed up. Still interested?
- Serpico: Stop fuckin' around. I'm not in the mood. Come on.
- Black informant: He's a loan shark, runs a big numbers operation. This mother's so cocksure, he picks up his own slips while he's collecting his loans.
- Kid on the street: You the new bagman? You prick. What happened to Rubello, you son of a bitch?
- Lt. Steiger: [Serpico and another cop have just been watching a naked girl out the bathroom window] Hold it, Serpico. What were you two doing?
- Frank Serpico: What?
- Lt. Steiger: In the shithouse, in the dark! Were you going down on him?
- Frank Serpico: What are you talking about?
- Lt. Steiger: You gonna tell me you were just doing a little Peeping Tom? You were suckin' his cock, weren't you!
- Frank Serpico: Are you crazy?
- Lt. Steiger: I'll show you fuckin' crazy. Last week I found a pair of shorts with semen on 'em.
- [He pushes open a stall and points]
- Lt. Steiger: There!
- Frank Serpico: Are you actually accusing me of this?
- Insp. Kellogg: [discussing the bribe money while eating lobster] Things like this were common practice in the bad old days. Hard to believe it's still going on.
- Capt. Insp. McClain: Frank, has anyone ever told you that you have a tendency toward self-pity?
- Frank Serpico: No, you're the first.
- Police Narcotics Instructor: I am passing out these marijuana cigarettes for you to sample, so that when you become plainclothesmen you'll be able to identify the pungent aroma and recognize the disorienting effect of the drug when you observe them in narcotics suspects. Among users of the drug a marijuana cigarette is referred to as reefer, stick, roach, joint. The drug itself is referred to as pot, tea, boo, stuff, grass.