- Ulysses Everett McGill: What'd the devil give you for your soul, Tommy?
- Tommy Johnson: Well, he taught me to play this here guitar *real* good.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Oh son, for that you traded your everlasting soul?
- Tommy Johnson: Well, I wasn't usin' it.
- Pete: You miserable little snake! You stole from my kin!
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Who was fixin' to betray us.
- Pete: You didn't know that at the time.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: So I borrowed it until I did know.
- Pete: That don't make no sense!
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Pete, it's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.
- Pomade Vendor: I can get the part from Bristol. It'll take two weeks, here's your pomade.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Two weeks? That don't do me no good.
- Pomade Vendor: Nearest Ford auto man's Bristol.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Hold on, I don't want this pomade. I want Dapper Dan.
- Pomade Vendor: I don't carry Dapper Dan, I carry Fop.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, I don't want Fop, goddamn it! I'm a Dapper Dan man!
- Pomade Vendor: Watch your language, young feller, this is a public market. Now if you want Dapper Dan, I can order it for you, have it in a couple of weeks.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!
- Pete: Wait a minute. Who elected you leader of this outfit?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well Pete, I figured it should be the one with the capacity for abstract thought. But if that ain't the consensus view, then hell, let's put it to a vote.
- Pete: Suits me. I'm voting for yours truly.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well I'm voting for yours truly too.
- [Everett and Pete look at Delmar for the deciding vote]
- Delmar O'Donnell: Okay... I'm with you fellas.
- Tommy Johnson: I had to be up at that there crossroads last midnight, to sell my soul to the devil.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, ain't it a small world, spiritually speaking. Pete and Delmar just been baptized and saved. I guess I'm the only one that remains unaffiliated.
- Blind Seer: You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek. But first... first you must travel a long and difficult road, a road fraught with peril. Mm-hmm. You shall see thangs, wonderful to tell. You shall see a... a cow... on the roof of a cotton house, ha. And, oh, so many startlements. I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward. Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.
- [after the *FOUR* soggy bottom boys finish recording "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow"]
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Woo! Hot Damn, son I believe you did sell your soul to the devil!
- Lund: Woooooooo-wee. Boy, that was a miiiighty fine a-pickin' and a-singin'! I'll tell you what, you come on in here and sign these papers here and I'm a gonna you ten dollars a piece.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Uh, okay sir. But Mert and Aloysius will have to sign Xes, only four of us can write.
- [first lines]
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Say, any of you boys smithies? Or, if not smithies per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin'?
- Pappy O'Daniel: And furthermore, by way of endorsing my candidacy, the Soggy Bottom Boys are gonna lead us all in a rousing chorus of "You Are My Sunshine."
- [Applause. Pappy turns away from the mike, towards Everett]
- Pappy O'Daniel: [no-nonsense] Ain't you, boys?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Governor, it's one of our favorites.
- Pappy O'Daniel: Son... you're gonna go far.
- Delmar O'Donnell: You work for the railroad, Grampa?
- Blind Seer: I work for no man.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Got a name, do you?
- Blind Seer: I have no name.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, that right there may be the reason you've had difficulty findin' gainful employment. You see, in the mart of competitive commerce...
- Pete: Well I'll be a sonofabitch. Delmar's been saved.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Well that's it, boys. I've been redeemed. The preacher's done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting's my reward.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Delmar, what are you talking about? We've got bigger fish to fry.
- Delmar O'Donnell: The preacher says all my sins is warshed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: I thought you said you was innocent of those charges?
- Delmar O'Donnell: Well I was lyin'. And the preacher says that that sin's been warshed away too. Neither God nor man's got nothin' on me now. C'mon in boys, the water is fine.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Can't you see it, Everett? Them sirens did this to Pete. They loved him up and turned him into a... horny toad. Pete! Pete! Pete! Pete! Pete! Pete. It's me - Delmar. Everett...
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Delmar. What the...
- Delmar O'Donnell: What are we gonna do?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: I'm not sure that's Pete.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Of course it's Pete. Look at him.
- Pete: I've always wondered, what's the devil look like?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, there are all manner of lesser imps and demons, Pete, but the great Satan hisself is red and scaly with a bifurcated tail, and he carries a hay fork.
- Tommy Johnson: Oh, no. No, sir. He's white, as white as you folks, with empty eyes and a big hollow voice. He likes to travel around with a mean old hound. That's right.
- Pete: The Preacher said it absolved us.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: For him, not for the law. I'm surprised at you, Pete, I gave you credit for more brains than Delmar.
- Delmar O'Donnell: But they was witnesses that seen us redeemed.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: That's not the issue Delmar. Even if that did put you square with the Lord, the State of Mississippi's a little more hard-nosed.
- [laughs]
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Baptism! You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers!
- Ulysses Everett McGill: You can't display a toad in a fine restaurant like this! Why, the good folks here would go right off the feed!
- Delmar O'Donnell: I just don't think it's right keeping him under wraps like we's ashamed of him.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, if it is Pete, I am ashamed of him! Way I see it, he got what he deserved, fornicating with some whore of Babylon. These things don't happen for no reason, Delmar. It's obviously some kinda judgment on his character.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Well, the two of us was fixin' to fornicate!
- Delmar O'Donnell: Care for some gopher?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: No thank you, Delmar. A third of a gopher would only arouse my appetite without beddin' 'er back down.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Oh, you can have the whole thing. Me and Pete already had one apiece. We ran across a whole... gopher village.
- Pappy O'Daniel: Sounded to me like he was harboring a hateful grudge against the Soggy Bottom Boys on account of their rough and rowdy past. Looks like Homer Stokes is the kind of fellow who wants to cast the first stone.
- [boos]
- Pappy O'Daniel: Well, I'm with you folks. I'm a forgive and forget Christian. And I say, if their rambunctiousness and misdemeanoring, is behind them...
- [turns away from the mike, towards Everett]
- Pappy O'Daniel: [no-nonsense] It is, ain't it, boys?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Uh, yes sir, it is.
- Pappy O'Daniel: Well, then, I say, by the power vested in me, these boys is hereby pardoned!
- Ulysses Everett McGill: The treasure is still there boys, believe me.
- Delmar O'Donnell: But how'd he know about the treasure?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: I don't know Delmar. The blind are reputed to possess sensitivities compensating for their lack of sight, even to the point of developing paranormal psychic powers. Now, clearly seeing into the future would fall into neatly into that category; its not so surprising then that an organism deprived of its earthly vision...
- Pete: He said we wouldn't get get it. He said we wouldn't get the treasure we seek on account of our ob-stac-les.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well what the hell does he know, he's just an ignorant old man?
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, you lying... unconstant... succubus!
- Vernon T. Waldrip: Whoa, whoa, whoa! You can't swear at my fiancé!
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Oh, yeah? Well, you can't marry my wife!
- Pappy's Staff: The reason he's pullin' our pants down.
- Pappy's Staff: Gonna paddle a little behind.
- Pappy's Staff: Ain't gonna paddle it - gonna kick it, real hard.
- Pappy's Staff: No, I believe he's gonna paddle it.
- Pappy's Staff: I don't believe that's a proper characterization.
- Pappy's Staff: Well, that's how I'd characterize it.
- Pappy's Staff: I believe it's more of a kickin' sitcheyation.
- George Nelson: Cows! I hate cows worse than coppers!
- [fires his Tommy gun at them]
- Delmar O'Donnell: Oh, George... not the livestock.
- [singing]
- Ulysses Everett McGill: I am a man of constant sorrow, I've seen trouble all my days. I bid farewell to old Kentucky, the place where I was born and raised.
- Delmar O'Donnell, Pete: The place where he was born and raised.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: For six long years I've been in trouble, no pleasure here on Earth I've found. For in this world I'm bound to ramble, I have no friends to help me out.
- Delmar O'Donnell, Pete: He has no friends to help him out.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger, my face you never will see no more. But there is one promise that is given, I'll meet you on God's golden shore.
- Delmar O'Donnell, Pete: He'll meet you on God's golden shore.
- Lund: Now, what can I do you for Mr. French?
- French: How can I lay a hold of them Soggy Bottom Boys?
- Lund: Soggy Bottom? I don't precisely recollect them.
- French: They cut a record in here a few days ago, was an old-timey harmony thing with a guitar accom... accomp...
- Lund: Oh here, here, here, I remember them! They was colored fellas, I believe.
- French: Uh huh.
- Lund: Yessuh, they're a fine bunch a boys. They sang in the yonder can and skeedadled.
- French: Well that record is goin' through the goddamned roof. They playin' it as far away as Mobile.
- Lund: Naw?
- French: Whole damn state's goin' apey.
- Lund: Well it was a powerful air.
- French: Hot damn, we gotta find them boys and sign 'em to a big fat contract. Hells Bells, Mr. Lund, if we don't the goddamned competition will.
- Lund: Ohhhh mercy! Yes we got to beat that competition.
- George Nelson: [after Nelson has robbed the bank] Thank you folks! And remember, Jesus saves, but George Nelson withdraws!
- [laughs]
- George Nelson: Go fetch the auto voiture, Pete.
- Woman In Bank: [whispering] Is that "Babyface" Nelson?
- George Nelson: Who said that?
- [pause]
- George Nelson: What ignorant, low down, slanderizin, son of a bitch said that?
- [goes up to woman]
- George Nelson: My name is George Nelson, get me?
- Delmar O'Donnell: She didn't mean nothin by it, George.
- George Nelson: [noticeably upset] George Nelson! Not "Babyface"! You remember, and you tell your friends! I'm George Nelson! Born to raise hell!
- [Nelson points his Tommy Gun towards the ceiling and fires it, and the bank patrons jump]
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Me an' the old lady are gonna pick up the pieces and retie the knot, mixaphorically speaking.
- Delmar O'Donnell: I'm gonna visit those foreclosing son-of-a-guns at the Indianola Savings & Loan, slap that money on the barrelhead and buy back the family farm. You ain't no kind of man if you ain't got land.
- Pappy O'Daniel: Shake a leg Junior! Thank God your mammy died givin' birth. If she'd have seen you, she'd have died o' shame.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Pete's cousin turned us in for the bounty.
- Pete: The hell you say! Wash is kin!
- Washington Hogwallop: Sorry, Pete, I know we're kin, but they got this depression on. I got to do for me and mine.
- Pete: I'm gonna kill you, Judas Iscariot Hogwallop!
- Homer Stokes: [as Grand Kleagle at a KKK rally] Brothers! Oh, brothers! We have all gathered here, to preserve our hallowed culture and heritage! We aim to pull evil up by the root, before it chokes out the flower of our culture and heritage! And our women, let's not forget those ladies, y'all. Looking to us for protection! From darkies, from Jews, from papists, and from all those smart-ass folks say we come descended from monkeys! That's not my culture and heritage! Is that your culture and heritage?
- [Chorus of "No!" from assembled Klansmen]
- Homer Stokes: And so, we gonna hang us a negro!
- Pete: Well hell, it ain't square one! Ain't nobody gonna pick up three filthy, unshaved hitch-hikers, and one of them a know-it-all that can't keep his trap shut.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Pete, the personal rancor reflected in that remark I don't intend to dignify with comment. But I would like to address your general attitude of hopeless negativism. Consider the lilies of the goddamn field or... hell! Take at look at Delmar here as your paradigm of hope.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Yeah, look at me.
- [Discussing how to counter Homer Stokes' campaign for governor]
- Junior O'Daniel: We could hire our own midget, even shorter than his.
- Pappy O'Daniel: Wouldn't we look like a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies, bragging on our own midget, doesn't matter how stumpy.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Deceitful, two-faced she-woman. Never trust a female Delmar, remember that one simple precept and your time with me will not have been ill spent.
- Delmar O'Donnell: Ok, Everett.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Hit by a train! Truth means nothing to a woman, Delmar. Triumph of the subjective. You ever been with a woman?
- Delmar O'Donnell: Well, I... I... I gotta get the family farm back before I can start thinking about that.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: That's right, if then. Believe me Delmar, woman is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man.
- Penny Wharvey McGill: I've spoken my piece and counted to three.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: She counted to three. Goddamit! She counted to three. Sonofabitch!
- Penny Wharvey McGill: Vernon here's got a job. Vernon's got prospects. He's bona fide. What are you?
- Delmar O'Donnell: We thought you was a toad!
- Pete: What?
- Delmar O'Donnell: [leaning in, speaking slower] We thought you was a toad!
- Big Dan Teague: You don't say much my friend, but when you do it's to the point, and I salute you for it.
- [about to be hung]
- Ulysses Everett McGill: It ain't the law!
- Sheriff Cooley: The law? The law is a human institution.
- Pappy O'Daniel: I'll press your flesh, you dimwitted sumbitch! You don't tell your pappy how to court the electorate. We ain't one-at-a-timin' here. We're MASS communicating!
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Ain't you gonna introduce us, Pete?
- Pete: I don't know their names. I seen 'em first!
- [last lines]
- Penny Wharvey McGill: Well, we need that ring.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Well that ring is at the bottom of a pretty durn big lake.
- Penny Wharvey McGill: Uh-uh.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: A 9,000 hectare lake.
- Penny Wharvey McGill: I don't care if it's 90,000...
- Ulysses Everett McGill: But honey...
- Penny Wharvey McGill: that lake was not my doing.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: Of course not honey...
- Penny Wharvey McGill: I counted to three, honey.
- Ulysses Everett McGill: No, wait, honey! Finding one little ring in the middle of all that water is one hell of a heroic task!