Mary Shannon quotes from In Plain Sight

Mary Shannon

[voice over] Since 1970, the Federal Witness Protection Program has relocated thousands of witnesses - some criminal, some not - to neighborhoods all across the country. Every one of those individuals shares a unique attribute distinguishing them from the rest of the general population. And that is: somebody wants them dead.

Mary

The care and feeding of career criminals like Frankie Nuts is a dicey proposition at best. On any given day, I get to play mother, father, best friend, priest, rabbi, marriage counselor, and yes unfortunately occasionally homicide detective which is why I find myself driving my misogynist metaphor across the desert with a busted air conditioner to hunt down the murderer of the son of my murderer witness. No backup. No plan to speak of. No alternative. Also, Frankie Jr. got killed on my watch. That just pisses me off.

Mary

[Voiceover] The Federal Witness Protection Program is the most secretive organization in all of law enforcement. We do not talk about what we do. Not to friends, not to family, not even to other U.S. Marshals. Which is why my mother, my sister, and even my boyfriend, who by the way isn't really my boyfriend, all think I'm a glorified messenger with a gun. And why Marshall and I work on the roof of the Sunshine Building, while the rest of the U.S. Marshals reside in the Pete Domenici Federal Courthouse, with their mahogany desks, crystal chandeliers and butlers.

Mary

[Voiceover] We all live in hiding. In one way or another, each of us conceals pieces of ourselves from the rest of the world. Some people hide because their lives depend on it, others because they don't like being seen. And then there are the special cases, the ones who hide because... because... because they just want someone to care enough to look for them.

Mary

[After walking in the front door of McRoy's home] Chrome and glass. Kind of cliche for a drug dealer, no?

Mary

"Happily ever after", the big lie. Those three insidious words, repeated again and again, promising myself and a gazillion other little girls that some day, sure as the sunset, a man prettier than ourselves would sweep us away. To live our lives forever and a day. Blah blah, blah. Never once mentioning the years of quiet desperation that surely followed. Which is why I pray with all my soul that whoever invented the lethal mantra "happily ever after" died penniless, face down in the gutter, with cats gnawing on his ears.

Mary

Now then, I want you to understand something. This program is an opportunity very few people get. A shot at fresh start; a do-over of your entire life, but it only works if you make the decision to be a better human being than you've been and allow the possibility of something greater for yourself. And as impossible as it may seem, I've seen even bigger scumbags than you do just that and make it stick.

Mary

[Voiceover] Nietzsche was right. "We come into this world alone and we go out of it alone." Perhaps that explains why we spend our time here on earth so infuriatingly dependent on others.

Mary

[Voiceover] Funny how things like mortgage payments and a desire to not eat cat food can get between a person and their principles. Damn, I hate principles.

Mary

[Voiceover] If there's one thing working in witness protection has taught me it's that people hate change. Oh, we all say we want to change; get thinner, quit smoking, learn to speak Portuguese, but we don't. For better or worse, our habits define us. We turn the pages of the same tattered script over and over, clinging to our well rehearsed routines like barnacles, and nothing rankles us more than having to learn new lines.

Mary

[On the phone] Hey, Stan, it's Mary. Imagine my surprise when Kay Swenson showed up drunk at Jay Arnstein's gallery and got into a fistfight with Marci Arnstein. Who could have possibly predicted that deceiving a witness and helping her husband commit adultery with his tramp mistress would end badly? You'd have to be a genius to see that one coming, right? Anyway, Stan, I'll need immediate relocation authorization. Call me! Bye!

Mary

[Voiceover] We've all had the experience of talking about a long-lost friend with someone, and then out of the blue the phone rings and it's that same long-lost friend. Famous psychobabble quack Carl Jung called these occurrences "synchronicity." Skeptics regard these synchronicities events as mere coincidences. Others posit a pie-in-the-sky cosmic connection linking all things. Take a guess on which side of the argument I fall.

Mary

One way or another, I am going to nail that guy. I mean literally, fillet him, nail his hide to a tree, spread it with jam and watch the squirrels go to town.

Mary

[Voiceover] At first glance, one might suppose me walking into the middle of Chris's gambling problem and the arrival of the FBI letter about my father, the gambler, to be cosmically connected events. And who knows, maybe they are. But in the end, the whole happenstance versus master plan debate probably a big waste of time. All that really matters is that we cross paths at an auspicious time. Chris was lucky. He got off with a year suspension, but will still be able to play his senior year. As for me, well...

Mary

[Voiceover] I think my least favorite phrase in the human language is "I'm sorry." Nine times out of ten when a person says they're sorry, they're really only sorry they got caught, and now want me to forgive them for something I'm still pissed off about. Which puts me in the unhappy position of either saying, "Up yours" and looking like a total bitch, or saying, "I forgive you" and feeling like a total schmuck. And that's why I hate the phrase...