Higgins Quotes in Almost Heroes (1998)

Jackson: Sir, Higgins has a story.

Edwards: Well, Higgins the floor is yours.

Higgins: This particular event happened last summer on my uncle's farm in Virginia. My brother and I had just finished cutting a field of hay and were enjoying the evening meal under the shade of an elm tree. He went down for water by the creek and when he was gone, I took a bowl that was filled with delicious plum pudding and placed into it, not one, but two large pieces of sheep shit. When he returned I encouraged him to taste the plum pudding... And as sure as Im standing before you, he did! He ate it all. Shit Pudding!

Edwards: You got your brother to eat sheep dung. That is a very interesting story.

Hunt: Tell him the ending, that's the best part.

Higgins: Oh yeah. To be perfectly honest with you sir, I have no brother. It was me. I ate sheep shit! Swear to God.

Edwards: Clever twist there on the ending.

Hunt: What I remembered the most were the animals.

Edwards: [smiles] Ah, the animals...

Hunt: Fearsome beasts of the mountains and plains. I've seen a bear so powerful... that it *snapped* a man's body in half with his huge jaws. Garrgghh! Garrgghh! I've seen a badger with paws as big as frying pans. And that'd rip your face right off! Right off! Nothing you can do with that! Just rip it off! Once there was a hawk that swooped down from the sky... Aggghhh! Aggghhh! Aggghhh! And plucked a man's eyeballs out of his sockets. Auuuggghhh! Auuuggghhh! The fella was screaming, "I'm blind! I can't see!" *Twice* when I was fishing...

Higgins: [Horrified] THERE'S AN ANIMAL NOW!

[everyone except Edwards and Hunt starts firing at the animal]

Higgins: We can't kill it! We're all dead! God save us!

Hunt: Hold your fire! Hold your fire!

[everyone stops firing. Hunt looks closely and sees that the animal is just a squirrel nibbling on an acorn]

Hunt: It's only a squirrel.

Pratt: He's got something in his hand!

Guy Fontenot: Something in his hand!

[they continue firing at the squirrel]

Anita Smythe: Higgins!

Higgins: Yes, madam?

Anita Smythe: My cousin Miss Martin is arriving from New York tomorrow. I want to be sure that everything is done just right.

Higgins: Yes, madam.

Anita Smythe: Thomas, you'll meet her plane in the morning.

Thomas, Chauffeur: Yes, madam.

Anita Smythe: I'm very anxious to show her that we can do things exactly as well out here as they do in the east.

Higgins: Yes, madam.

Anita Smythe: I want perfect meals and perfect service.

Higgins: Yes, madam.

Anita Smythe: And Mary, I hope you'll remember what I told you this morning about visitors.

Mary Blake: Yes, madam.

Higgins: This is not a wedding ceremony, Mr. Browning. You are not obligated to repeat everything I say.

Higgins: Aren't you feeling well, sir?

Mr. Borden: I guess I'm all right.

Higgins: Perhaps its a touch of spring fever.

Mr. Borden: Perhaps.

Higgins: I felt it myself this afternoon, just walking in the park.

Mr. Borden: What park?

Higgins: Central Park, sir.

Mr. Borden: Oh, yes, I forgot it was there.

Higgins: To be frank, sir, we servants enjoy the luxuries of the rich and have none of the responsibilities.

Higgins: You were very quiet after you fell down the stairs, sir. You're last request was that we put Miss America in the guest room.

Mr. Borden: Miss America? Did somebody else come home with us?

Mary Grey: No, I'm Miss America.

Higgins: You call yourself a dentist, will ya?

Bones: Now wait a minute, mister! Let's talk this over!

Higgins: By the time I get through with you, you'll not be talkin' - just lispin' you'll be - with meself as a dentist, too, and I won't pull your teeth; I'll be knockin' 'em through the back of your head!

Higgins: I wouldn't be trustin' you to pull a whisker out of Pat Murphy's pig!

[Wabash talks about his entry into the US intelligence field]

Mr. Wabash: I go even further back than that. Ten years after The Great War, as we used to call it. Before we knew enough to number them.

Higgins: You miss that kind of action, sir?

Mr. Wabash: No, I miss that kind of clarity.

Higgins: Oh, you... you poor dumb son of a bitch. You've done more damage than you know.

Joe Turner: I hope so.

Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?

Joe Turner: Ask them?

Higgins: Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!

[last lines]

Higgins: Hey, Turner! How do you know they'll print it? You can take a walk. But how far if they don't print it?

Joe Turner: They'll print it.

Higgins: How do you know?

Higgins: It'd have to be somebody in the community.

Joe Turner: Community.

Higgins: Intelligence field.

Joe Turner: Community! Jesus, you guys are kind to yourselves. Community.

Higgins: It didn't have to end this way.

Joe Turner: Of course it did.

Joe Turner: Just look around. They've got it. That's where they ship from. They've got all of it.

Higgins: What? What did you do?

Joe Turner: I told them a story. You play games, I told them a story.

Higgins: I'm sorry.

Joe Turner: You're sorry? You're sorry. Oh, I get it. I get it. You expect me to draw fire, like one of those penny arcade bears that parades back and forth waiting for somebody, somebody very good just to take another shot, and you're just gonna hang around and pick him up just before he does it? Or just after?

Higgins: I'll try and find out what's going on; I'm gonna cross-check all those names...

Joe Turner: Nice talking to you, Higgins. Have a nice day.

Joe Turner: This is no damned book! Somebody or something is rotten in the Company!

Higgins: You never complained 'til yesterday.

Joe Turner: You didn't start killing my friends until yesterday!

Higgins: You served with Col. Donovan in the OSS, didn't you, sir?

Mr. Wabash: I sailed the Adriatic with a movie star at the helm. It doesn't seem like much of a war now, but it was.

Joe Turner: [into telephone] Hey, Higgins?

Higgins: Yeah, I'm right here...

Joe Turner: Who is Leonard Atwood?

Higgins: [no response]

Joe Turner: Where ARE you, Higgins?

Higgins: [no response]

Joe Turner: ...ain't we pals, anymore?

[hangs up]

Joe Turner: Hey, Higgins? Let's say, for the purposes of argument, I had a .45 in one of my pockets, and I wanted you to take a walk with me, you'd do it, right?

Higgins: Which way?

Joe Turner: Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?

Higgins: Are you crazy?

Joe Turner: Am I?

Higgins: Look, Turner...

Joe Turner: Do we have plans?

Higgins: No, absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. 'What if?' 'How many men?' 'What would it take?' 'Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime?' That's what we're paid to do.

Joe Turner: Supposing I hadn't stumbled onto a plan; say, nobody had?

Higgins: Different ballgame... the fact is, there was nothing wrong with the plan. No, the plan was alright; the plan would've worked!

Higgins: You're about to be a very lonely man... it didn't have to end this way.

Joe Turner: Of course it did!