Ives Quotes in Montana (1998)

[the boss bursts into the room and breaks up a loud argument among his henchmen at the poker table]

The Boss: What the fuck is going on?

Ives: Somebody was cheating, boss.

The Boss: Yeah, well of course somebody was cheating, you're a bunch of fucking criminals. That is precisely why this always happens.

Hilts: What do they call a mole in Scotland?

Ives: A mole?

Hilts: Aye.

Stratwitch: Your name?

Ives: Ives.

[Strachwitz looks through his prisoner profiles]

Stratwitch: Ives... Ives... Oh, yes. Archibald Ives. Scot. The photograph doesn't do justice.

Ives: I'd like to see one of you under similar circumstances.

Fletcher: You're not doing yourself any favours, are you Banyard? All you're doing is getting up other people's noses.

Banyard: We have certain rights.

Fletcher: No we don't, we're in the nick.

Ives: I suppose you think you're entitled to something better just because you went to a public school, is that it?

Banyard: On the contrary, Ives, I'm well used to this kind of food, I went to Harrow.

Fletcher: Oh that's a good advert for the public school system, prepares you for the nick. Course it's harder in here for him than for most of us, 'cause he has had further to drop. Professional man, you see. Dentist. Tragic.

Ives: What do you mean, Fletcher, 'tragic'? It's no laughing matter for that woman he had under the laughing gas.

Banyard: There's no need for that, Ives. We don't have to keep unearthing each other's past, I'm paying for my peccadilloes.

Fletcher: Oh that's good. If you're paying I'll have a large one.

Bunny Warren: What's a peccadillo?

Ives: It's a South African bird. Flies backwards to stop getting the sand in its eyes.

Bunny Warren: No. No. I know what you mean though. It's an animal. Called the Armadildo.

Banyard: The Armadildo.

Fletcher: No, that was King Arthur's codpiece. I think that's what I'm eating an' all.

Ives: I didn't know Samson and Delilah ate millet.

Ives: If you die first, I am definitely going to eat you, but the question is, if I die, what are you going to do? Bon appétit... Eat or die.

[looking through a spyglass as three people approach the fort]

Ives: Breakfast... lunch... and reinforcements.

Ives: Morality - the last bastion of a coward.

Ives: It's not courage to resist me, Boyd. It's courage to accept me.

Ives: I found your Private Reich up there... or what was left of him. You didn't finish! Well, I can't blame you; he was tough.

[snorts]

Ives: But then, a good soldier ought to be.

Ives: You remember this? You smell it? The scent... always jogs the memory, don't you think? Remember the energy? The potency of someone else coursing through your veins? Someone brave. You know the disappointment as it dissipates; the strength slipping from your grasp. The growing, killing need to replenish. But I don't have to remind you of that. You're feeling it right now.

Ives: [takes a big breath of smoke] You know, not too long ago I couldn't do that. Could barely take a breath without coughing up a pint of blood. Tuberculosis. That along with fierce headaches... depression... suicidal ambition. I was in pretty horrible shape. In fact I was on my way to a sanatorium to convalesce when a native scout told me a curious story. Man eats the flesh of another, he takes the other man's strength, absorbs his spirit. Well. Naturally I just had to try. Consequently I ate the scout first and you know he was absolutely right. I grew stronger. Tuberculosis? Vanished. As did the headaches and the black thoughts. I returned that spring happy. And healthy. And virile...

Ives: We won't kill indiscriminately. No... selectively. We don't want to break up families.

Knox: What are you cooking?

Ives: It's, uh... stew.

Knox: Need any help?

Ives: No, no, no. Perhaps later you might... contribute.

Ives: Eat to live. Don't live to eat.

Ives: That was very... sneaky.

Ives: [looking out over the mountains] Manifest Destiny. You know, come April, thousands of gold-hungry Americans will over those mountains, on their way to new lives, passing right through...

[turns around indicating Fort Spencer]

Ives: here.

Ives: [gun clicks] That's sooo annoying.

Ives: Of course, we've no wish to recruit everyone. We've enough mouths to feed as it is!

[laughs]