Francis Wolcott quotes from Deadwood

Francis Wolcott

[Muttering to himself] Past hope. Past kindness or consideration. Past justice. Past satisfaction. Past warmth or cold or comfort. Past love. But past surprise? What an endlessly unfolding tedium life would then become!

Wolcott

I am a sinner who does not expect forgiveness. But I am not a government official.

Francis Wolcott

You're a desperate man, aren't you, Tolliver? Desperate. You feel your position weakening.

Francis Wolcott

You've approached a group in San Francisco that does business with my employer.

Cy Tolliver

That group and employer bullshit really quickens me with fuckin' trust.

Wolcott

That group you've approached is a fraternal Chinese organization.

Tolliver

"Tong" is not a clever enough word?

Wolcott

You offered them a contract to send members to this camp. That organization has a pre-existing arrangement with my employer.

Tolliver

So you work for who, Wolcott? The railroads? Some mining combination that brings those slant-eyes in by the boatload?

Wolcott

No, sir. I work for one man.

E.B. Farnum

Some ancient Italian maxim fits our situation, whose particulars escape me.

Francis Wolcott

Is the gist that I'm shit outta luck?

Farnum

Did they speak that way then?

Because them as poke around Miz Garret's workings without a by-your-leave ain't welcome, Mr. Wolcott, and you ought not to repeat your fuckin' mistake.

Wolcott

Well, that's an uncivil response to an innocent error.

Did you work in the Comstock when you was beardless?

Wolcott

I did.

For Mr. George Hearst, as a keen eye for the color?

Wolcott

As a geologist for Mr. Hearst. Well, you have the advantage of me, Mr. Ellsworth.

That ain't a possibility, Wolcott. No more than an error of yours would be innocent.

Wolcott

I do dimly recall an Ellsworth superintended the consolidated Virginia operations.

I don't give a fuck what you recall.

Wolcott

A hero. Dug a week without respite to save three poor souls from a cave-in.

And 46 corpses in a fucking hole that ought never to have been dug.

Wolcott

Always a choice... to count the saved or the lost.

Get off this property.

Wolcott

Just as a man opposed to inevitable change needn't invariably be called a Luddite, another choice might be simply to describe him as slow in his processes.

You tell that cocksucker you work for the next surrogate he sends oughtn't to be bloodied from the Comstock.

And you, Mr. Wolcott, I find you the most severe disappointment of all.

Wolcott

Often to myself as well.

Cy Tolliver

Now that's an attitude right there I want us to counsel on. Smart-alecky sort of attitude and almost with a quality of.. fuckin' anger to it. I don't find the exact fuckin' words for it, but it fuckin' disturbs and concerns me.

Francis Wolcott

By my lights, I feel I manage well.

Cy Tolliver

Well, you can say that, Mr. Wolcott, yet I hear accounts that you're a dangerous lay, and that adds to my feeling disturbed. Are you inclined, sir, every so often to.. 'ride one off the cliff'? Girls, I mean.

Francis Wolcott

I am disturbed at my private conduct being spoken of.

Cy Tolliver

Well, I should think you fuckin' would be. And to think of Mr. Hearst's disturbance if he was to fuckin' know. Because, that's a dangerous habit to indulge when you're not among friends.

Francis Wolcott

Are you my friend, Mr. Tolliver?

Cy Tolliver

And someone past surprise at habits or inclination, or turns of events, and who don't confuse himself far as sitting in judgment with our Lord in fuckin' heaven.

Francis Wolcott

I see

Cy Tolliver

And who would never tattle to your employer or jeopardize what's got to be a handsome fuckin' income. God damn right, I am your friend, Mr. Wolcott. All I can't provide for the party is the cliff.

Francis Wolcott

Believing yourself past surprise does not commend you to me as a friend. A man inadequately sophisticated or merely ignorant, or simply stupid, may believe himself past surprise, then be surprised to discover, for example, that Mr. Hearst already knows of my inclinations and finds them immaterial. Suggesting as a corollary that your skills for blackmail and manipulation no longer are assets to you, and for your fatuous belief in their efficacy, in fact have become liabilities. In short, you've overplayed your hand. Now I should think, in consequence, now recognizing yourself as a man past his time, that during this last transitional period you would devote yourself with grateful and quiet diligence to such uses as others may still find you suitable.

Francis Wolcott

I feel you breathing down my neck.

Charlie Utter

Should I exhale out my ass?

Francis Wolcott

And I believe you're doing it intentionally.

Charlie Utter

Why? You think I believe you're a fuckin' cunt?

Francis Wolcott

[turns to face Utter] If we fight, it won't be a casual matter.

Charlie Utter

Ohhh, I see you got your big fuckin' knife there, and hid somewhere on your persons you've probably got some pussified shootin' instrument. But I am good at first impressions, and you are a fucking cunt, and I DOUBT you've fought many MEN, maybe even ONE!

Francis Wolcott

Prudence dictates my requiring, in return, your account of what Miss Stubbs told you.

Charlie Utter

The prudentest thing you can do is not name that girl again with me in the fucking room.

Francis Wolcott

I am simply asking confirmation of what you were told and by whom.

Charlie Utter

And I'm promising I'll sooner blow off your fucking head, and take the fucking letter from your corpse than confide any fucking particulars.

Francis Wolcott

To me?

Charlie Utter

To any fucking one, when I give my word I wouldn't.

Doc Cochran

Do you speak Chinese?

Francis Wolcott

I do not, sir.

Doc Cochran

However you accomplish communication with that son of a bitch, then the more the disgrace to your soul!

Mose Manuel

That easy, to forget a fucking brother!?

Francis Wolcott

Money has properties in this regard! ..Though no remedy is discovered yet sovereign against sentimental remorse.

Francis Wolcott

On my order, Mr. Tolliver, Lee will burn this building, mutilating you before, during or after as I specify, or when he chooses unless I forbid.

Cy Tolliver

Oh, my full attention is at your disposal.

Hearst

[slaps the wall of his room in the Grand Central Hotel] These walls are coming down.

Wolcott

They'll be your walls soon.

Hearst

Ever since I was a child in Missouri I've been down ever hole I could find.

Wolcott

Boy-the-earth-talks-to.

Hearst

Yeah, I've told you, that's what the Indians call me.

Wolcott

Yes.

Hearst

It talks to you too, Francis, I know. Our time together, your hearing has stayed keen. But this gambler Tolliver, who was our agent for buying the claims has spoken to me about you. He says that you've killed women. Prostitutes. That he has disposed of the bodies for you.

Wolcott

[stunned, fumbles putting out his cigar]

Hearst

WELL!?

Wolcott

When I was in Campeche, you wrote a letter on my behalf.

Hearst

To the Jefe de Policia.

Wolcott

"I am aware of Mr. Wolcott's difficulty. You will find me personally grateful for any adjustments you may make in his case." What did you think that was about?

Hearst

I didn't think about it. You were my agent in Mexico! You had many responsibilities. You asked me for the letter and I wrote it!

Wolcott

As when the earth talks to you particularly, you never ask its reasons.

Hearst

I don't need to know why I'm lucky!

Wolcott

What if the earth talks to us to get us to arrange its amusements?

Hearst

That sounds like goddamned nonsense to me.

Wolcott

Suppose to you it whispers, "You are king over me. I exist to flesh your will."

Hearst

Nonsense.

Wolcott

And to me... "There is no sin." It happened in Mexico and now it's happened here.

Hearst

We must end our connection, you understand that, Francis. Make a severance you think is fair. You know I won't quibble. Does some spirit overtake you? Is that what you mean by the "talk"?

Wolcott

No.

Hearst

It tells me where the color is. That's all it tells me. My God.