Great Gangsters Quotes & Sayings

Playing gangsters is great. They usually dress you sharp. And you have a license to pretty much bully anybody. I mean, I wouldn't dare do that at home. My wife will give me a back hander. — Alex Rocco

In the 1970s and early '80s, Shanghai was quiet, cautious, a ghost of a once-great city - and yet physically, little was changed from its glittering heyday. When visiting, I enjoyed reading books on local history and used my time off to scope out the former haunts of gangsters and jazzmen. — Nicole Mones

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes. — Stanley Kubrick

Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads. — William C. Brown

Nicky turned and bolted. He'd only had about a thirty foot head start and a few were closing ground on him quickly. He cursed his hundred-dollar shoes and his vanity. The shoes looked great, but were definitely not made for running, nor was the suit he was wearing. He vowed that if he made it out of there alive, he'd only wear sneakers and track suits for the rest of his days. Of course, I'll probably be laughed out of the mob, but I don't care at this point. — Ian McClellan

Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire. — Stephen King

He was like the Great Santini of the Strand. Few people could take him on; he was so well-read and had a memory that could retain every detail of everything he'd ever read, as well as jokes, lyrics, arias, names of store owners he'd met on his honeymoon in Paris, names of restaurants where gangsters were gunned down in 1924. He could quote lines from books he disliked better than you could quote lines from what you claimed was your favorite book of all time. — Jeanne Darst

Visually I've always liked the 20s 30s for film. I do these because I like the music. I like the clothes. I like the way the women and the guys look. There are soldiers and sailors and gangsters with the machine guns in their violin cases. It's a very colorful era of New York, full of great theater and great nightclubs and great jazz. — Woody Allen

It was funny on '24' because I'm a Scots-Canadian, and I was working with the great Scottish actor Tony Curran, and we were both playing Russian gangsters. — Callum Keith Rennie