Mace Quotes in Strange Days (1995)

Lenny Nero: Are we still friends?

Mace: I don't know Lenny. You see, friendship is more than one person constantly doing favors for another.

Mace: Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason.

Mace: This is your life, right here, right now! It's real-time, you hear me, real time! Time to get real, not playback. You understand me?

Mace: I can't believe you had to give them the damn tape.

Lenny Nero: Yeah I know. It was one of my favorites: me and Faith in the hot tub on my birthday.

[Lenny takes the actual tape out of his jacket]

Lenny Nero: Are we impressed yet?

Mace: Yeah... pretty impressed.

Lenny: Have you ever been in love with someone who didn't return that love?

Mace: Yeah, Lenny, I have.

Lenny: It didn't stop you from loving them, right? Or being able to understand them or forgive them?

Mace: I guess.

Mace: You're some piece of work, Lenny Nero. You're just calmly backstroking along in the big toilet bowl and somehow you never let it touch you. I mean, between working vice and your current so-called occupation, you must have seen every kind of perversion. But you're just like... some teflon man, you still come out this goofball romantic.

Lenny Nero: It's my sword and my shield, Mace.

[last lines]

Mace: Hey, Lenny, we made it!

Lenny Nero: Yea, we did.

Mace: You should get going.

Lenny Nero: Yea, see you downtown.

Mace: See you there.

Mace: What in the hell are you doing? You made me lose him, numb nuts!

Lieutenant Atkins: Question is, why you chasing that man for? He's legally out on bail. Now, I'm the law, and I want to know what you're up to. I mean, what is it, Mace? You having an affair with that boy? You switch hittin', you son of a bitch? Baby doll kept her legs closed a little too long? Ha ha ha ha!

Mace: Don't you ever... EVER call me a son of a bitch.

Lieutenant Atkins: Damn! My nose! You broke my nose!

Ilias: What's your name?

Mace: My enemies call me Mace.

Ilias: And your friends?

Mace: I don't have any friends.

Mace: When a man meets a man, you never know which one will die. But when an animal meets a man, it's always the animal that dies. I'm on the animals' side.

Ilias: Isn't this an animal you're eating?

Mace: [shrugs] I didn't kill him.

Ilias: That's a pretty strange law.

Mace: Not when you're hungry.

Searle: It's invigorating. It's like... taking a shower in light. You lose yourself in it.

Corazon: Like a floatation tank?

Searle: Actually, no. More like... In psych tests on deep space, I ran a number of sensory deprivation trials, tested in total darkness, on floatation tanks - and the point about darkness is, you float in it. You and the darkness are distinct from each other because darkness is an absence of something, it's a vacuum. But total light envelops you. It becomes you. It's very strange... I recommend it.

Mace: What's strange, Searle, is that you're the psych officer on this ship and I'm clearly a lot saner than you are.

Trey: I'd need to look at all of the carefully, very carefully. But if I had to make a guess right now, I'd say we could adjust our trajectory. We could fly straight to them.

Mace: But we're not going to do that. Just to make it absolutely clear there's no way we're going to do that. Do I have to spell it out for you? We have a payload to deliver to the heart of our nearest star. We are delivering that payload cause that star is dying and if it dies, we die, everything dies. So that is our mission, there is nothing, literally nothing more important than completing our mission. End of story.

Pinbacker: I am Pinbacker, Commander of the Icarus One. We have abandoned our mission. Our star is dying. All our science. All our hopes, our... our dreams, are foolish! In the face of this, we are dust, nothing more. Unto this dust, we return. When he chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God.

Mace: Okay, that make sense to anyone?

[from trailer]

Kaneda: It's a two person job, fixing the shield. Harvey you're second in command, you're not coming.

Trey: I volunteer.

Mace: No! *I* volunteer...

Kaneda: Alright.

Mace: I volunteer Capa.

Capa: [after long pause] ... alright...

Mace: We should split up.

Harvey: I'm not sure that's such a good idea...

Mace: You're probably right. We might get picked off one at a time by aliens.

Mace: Were screwed... one of us isn't anyway.

Harvey: What happened?

Mace: The airlock's destroyed. There's only one suit. Capa's taking it.

Harvey: ...Why Capa?

Mace: Because the rest of us are lower priority.

Harvey: I'm Not A Low Priority.

Mace: You're a comms officer on a ship that has no means of communication.

Harvey: I am the captain!, The mission needs a captain to hold it together.

Mace: When the Icarus Two was broken apart from Icarus One, there's something we weren't thinking about. The computer was down. The airlock was decoupled manually.

Corazon: I was on the flight deck with Cassie the whole time.

Capa: And I was with Mace and Searle in the observation room.

Mace: And I think we can all... assume it wasn't Harvey. That leaves one possibility.

Corazon: Trey.

Capa: But why would Trey do it? He blames everything on himself, he sleeps twenty-three hours a day, he's clinically depressed... Why'd he do it?

Mace: We don't know, but we can't discard it as a possibility.

Corazon: And there's something else.

[slides forward a piece of paper]

Corazon: With Searle and Harvey gone, we lost two breathers. We have enough oxygen for four crew to make it to the payload delivery point.

Capa: So we'll do it.

Mace: I'll do it. I'm not passing any bucks.

Corazon: Well, then...

Mace: We'll vote this time. Unanimous decision required.

[pause]

Mace: Well, you know where I stand.

Corazon: [draws back the piece of paper] And me.

Mace, Corazon: [look at Capa]

Capa: What are you asking? That we weigh the life of one man versus the future of all mankind?

[pause]

Capa: Kill him.

Mace: [looks at Cassie] Cassie...

Cassie: [a tear slides down her face] No.

Mace: Cassie...

Cassie: I know the argument. I know the logic. You're saying you need my vote. I'm saying you can't have it.

Mace: [long pause]

[gets up]

Mace: Sorry, Cassie...

Cassie: [crying] Oh God... Make it easy for him. Somehow.

Searle: May I make a counter-argument?

Mace: No!

Searle: There is something on board the Icarus I that may be worth the detour. As you pointed out, Mace, we have a payload to deliver. *A* payload, singular. Now, everything about the delivery and effectiveness of that payload in entirely theoretical. Simply put, we don't know if it's gonna work. But what we do know is this: If we had two bombs, we'd have two chances.

Capa: You're assuming we'd be able to pilot Icarus I.

Searle: Yes.

Kaneda: Which is assuming that whatever stopped them wasn't a fault or damage to the spacecraft.

Searle: Yes.

Mace: That's a lot of assumptions.

Helo: You let him get away with too much!

Mace: You don't tear off the hand that feeds you, Helo. The minute he stops feeding us, I'll rip his heart out.

Mace: I just want to be able to unhinge my jaw like an Anaconda.

Mace: What sort of name is 'Andi' for a girl?

Andi: It's short for Andrea. What sort of name is 'Mace'?

Mace: It's short for 'in your face'!

Andi: Here's the deal: no clothes, no mail.

Mace: No, here's the deal. I'll get my own mail, you go fuck yourself!

Russ: [Admiring Norma] That's a lot of woman!

Mace: Ever here any of us disagreeing... about that?

Mace: Trouble with you, Clay, is that you're rich enough to be an honorable man. I can't afford it.

Clay Putnam: [Shocked that his men have killed a little girl] And to think this happened in the name of the Confederacy!

Mace: Whether the South wins or loses means nothing to me - never has!