The Rum Diary * Quotes

Moburg: "Maybe I can interest you gentlemen in something else."
Paul Kemp: "Like what? Death?"
Moburg: "Like the most powerful drug in the history of narcotics. I'm not at liberty to discuss or disclose, all I can tell you is: this stuff is so powerful, they give it to communists."
Paul Kemp: "Who does?"
Moburg: "The FBI."
Sala: "Why would the FBI get communists high?"
Moburg: "That I can't help you with."

"I wonder what it is you might think about our different worlds. He looked at me kinda sideways and said, 'Human beings are the only creatures on Earth who claim a God, and the only living thing that behaves like it hasn't got one. Does the world belong to no one but you?' And when he said it, I was taken aback. Not because of who was doing the talking. Because I finally understood the connection between children scavenging for food, and shiny brass plates on the front doors of banks."

"This country was built on genocide and slavery. We killed all the black guys over here and then we shipped in new black guys of our own. And then we brought in Jesus like a bar of soap."

"Beasts of obesity. Asses that wouldn't feel an arrow. The great whites... probably the most dangerous creatures on earth."

"Why did she have to happen? Just when I was doing so good without her."

"Oscar Wilde once said, 'Nowadays, people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.'"

Paul Kemp: "I thought you said you had a TV."
Sala: "No, the guy across the alley has a TV. I have binoculars."