Rock of Eye

Billions 6×5

Philip Charyn: Life lesson, always carry a cleaver. Oh, wait. No. That's not really the lesson. The lesson is, know how to change the mood in a room quickly and with authority.

Philip Charyn: ...here's the deal. Your customer can have two of these, not three. Cheap and fast can't also be good. Good and fast can't also be cheap. So you can fight over turf, or... you can figure out a vision. Let the budget sort itself out.

Mike Prince: Or I can double it. ....
Philip Charyn: Not sure that's the right lesson.
Mike Prince: Most important one: "Money makes the rules."

Rhoades, Sr.: Did you know that Face ID works when you're asleep?
Chuck Rhoades: Why wouldn't it?
Rhoades, Sr.: You oughta go after Big Tech.

Daniel: Do not buy friendship or comfort.
Wendy: Where I come from, everything's a transaction.
Daniel: Where you're going... a commitment to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, the goal is to avoid being transactional at all.

Wendy: I'll start with a month. Go from there.
Daniel: Start with a day.
Wendy: When I decide something...
Daniel: Start with an hour, even a minute. Then add a minute on to that one. That's the work. We'll meet again in four days, see how it's going.
Wendy: You're not sure I can refrain from transacting for four days?
Daniel: Whether I'm sure matters not at all.

Wendy: It's not Axe Capital, Chuck.
Chuck: It's worse. Because it pretends to be better.

Kate Sacker: In my, uh, prior employment situation with He Whom I Shall Not Mention...

Ben Kim: No. You never ask for less. They'll think something's wrong with you, maybe even fire you on principle.

Kate Sacker: I know exactly what you're doing with Terravore.
Taylor Mason: Trying to pick a winner in a fast-growing sector.
Kate Sacker: Trying to get it added. To boost its price and market cap by enough that it's added to the S&P 500. When it is, all the index funds are forced to buy in, that's the rule. Which pumps the stock even more, and you can dump it before it cools.

Mike Prince: We all get a thing, right, when I do well? All the things.
Liz Prince: That's the first time you've ever said anything like that.
Mike Prince: We're all grownups here now, aren't we? So let's not leave it unsaid. You're both billionaires, or you will be partially because of all the times I held my tongue and didn't tell someone what I actually thought.
Gail Prince: You made more doing the opposite! The gift you've given us is, "Have no fear about speaking our minds."

Chuck Rhoades: They say the finest bespoke tailors have "rock of eye." Can see beyond pattern and chalk to take someone's true measure by instinct, expertise.

Mike Prince: Newspapers? They call 'em "history's first rough draft" for a reason. Same reason the Irish took 'em into the jacks before toilet paper.

Wendy: B.F. Skinner said free will is an illusion; all we really have is conditioning behavior and its consequences. And even the worst behavior, followed by pleasant consequences, is bound to be repeated.

Rhoades, Sr.: So... I need to condition myself. For the good.
Wendy: No. It's why you can't change. You've only been rewarded for bad behavior so...

Wendy: I couldn't go the four days without being transactional. I couldn't go four hours. I'm gonna start over. Call you when I get there.

Mike Prince: I know this can be an all-star team, but you can play way above the rim. But you'll never get there with blisters on your feet. That's why I keep hammering you on the fundamentals... Position sizing, focus, restraint. And, for all your moves, for all your talent, it looks like Axe never taught you how to put on your socks and your shoes...

--
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Burn Rate

Billions 6×4

Kate Sacker: I was approached.
Chuck Rhoades: For a job?
Kate Sacker: Nobody said anything about a job.
Chuck Rhoades: It's a job.

Kate Sacker: So, obviously, I'm not going...
Chuck Rhoades: Oh, no, you're going. But you're going for me.

Scooter: M-Tap, I think he's right.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Oh, I'm right, 'cause this is the down and dirty, and I happen to be both.

Taylor Mason: Feeling that Jack London, Elizabeth Gilbert call, huh?
Rian: I don't aim to leave for another eight to ten months, at least. Just pre-planning.
Taylor Mason: Once you've saved up enough.
Rian: Right. No shame in the frugality game. I'll peace once I have 600k. But for now, it's more about grooving the feeling. Visualizing.

Taylor Mason: If reality were as good as the fantasy, we wouldn't have had to invent "The Sims."
Rian: If we start talking Sims, I'll never get back to work.
Taylor Mason: Yeah. I lost all of 8th grade in service of one particularly needy pet Sim dog, an Akita.

Taylor Mason: Thing is, fantasy or reality, you aren't calculating opportunities lost. Here. To your career. To your development.
Rian: Come on, you never think about getting free?
Taylor Mason: No hidden agenda. I too have considered and calculated an out number.
Rian: Assuming it's a little steeper than the cost of a Pittsburgh duplex, huh? How much? Twenty mil? Fifty?
Taylor Mason: About twice that.
Rian: Oof! Boss wants a beach house and a ski chalet... No. No, they do not. Or that's not the why, anyway.
Taylor Mason: Correct. It's not for lifestyle. I plan to leave once I've accrued enough personal capital to drive real, measurable, prosocial advancement.
Rian: A 5% withdrawal rate to protect against principal erosion?
Taylor Mason: Exactly. One hundred million is a solid starting point to build a legacy of truly effective humanitarian progress.
Rian: Okay, but if my math is right, and I'm p-sure it is, you still got a while before you get to temple-run.
Taylor Mason: I do, so I gotta serve my master, get paid, and make sure I can move the needle even before I hit my number.

Bob Sweeney: Listen, I know I got to take a flume ride with one of you two lunatics on this. I just haven't decided who I win with yet. And you both need me more, so I finally got my balls back. Can you hear 'em clank?

Chuck Rhoades: Perhaps this isn't a decision that requires a great show of inner steel. Perhaps it merely requires remembering that we, both of us, serve the people. And Mike Prince's grand plan, it doesn't really serve them. We know this.
Bob Sweeney: You may know this. But I may need a little more convincing.

Mike Prince: Is she as good as they say?
Wendy Rhoades: Steel-trap legal mind, charisma, knows how to work the angles. Has political ambitions too. Learned at Chuck's elbow.
Mike Prince: Sounds amazing. Is she gettable?

Mike Prince: There must be something that would induce you to do it for me, to make it worth it.
Wendy Rhoades: I'm not that transactional.

Mike Prince: Consider it.
Wendy Rhoades: You hear what you're asking, right?
Mike Prince: You hear what I'm offering, right?.. So will you?

Kate Sacker: You starting a band?
Chuck Rhoades: We may have a meeting across the river, if you know what I'm saying.
Kate Sacker: Let's switch to you knowing what I'm saying. Congress. It's time.

Chuck Rhoades: We're finally doing the good thing for good reason, and it will be good for you, Kate.

Taylor Mason: You know what the most powerful four-letter word is?
Mike Prince: I don't curse much.
Taylor Mason: "Free."

Mike Prince: You have a line into it?
Taylor Mason: Yes. Here's the pitch: New Yorkers get it gratis, courtesy of the Games. Free Internet in the five boroughs is the holy grail. And we set it up so that every time a New Yorker uses it, someone in sub-Saharan Africa gets the same allotment of Wi-Fi.
Mike Prince: It's a do-good, feel-good, look-good play. The greatest trio since Run-DMC and Jam Master Jay. What's it gonna cost?
Taylor Mason: Twenty-two million, and we control the company.
Mike Prince: ..... Do it.

Mike Prince: How's this whole "Tango and Cash" thing going?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Ah, the Stallone-Russell classic.
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: Which one is Stallone in that?

Rian: It won't be as much money. Barely any, really.
Taylor Mason: Willing to pay that price.
Rian: Yeah. Me too. More than willing... That's what I always say... It's not really. It just seemed like what I should say now.

Wendy Rhoades: You know, Kate... sometimes staying too long is a bigger risk than leaving too soon. There's never a right time to make a big change.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Yeah, after we eat, it's off to Palazzo with our soft targets. Place is loaded with talent. Clean talent. And I mean clean. Ladies, gentlemen, other. Everything they'll want. And all documented, vaxxed, and virus-free with antibodies onboard.

Kate Sacker: Whoa! Whew. You scared me there... with your Batmobile. What brings you up to the triple digits?

Mike Prince: Having blind faith in anyone can be dangerous, even yourself. Adam Grant talks about this in Think Again. The best predictors of the future aren't smarter. They're just willing to take one more look, one more time, than the other folks.

Mike Prince: If your mother asks how many eggs you want, and you say one, but she makes two and you eat both, who's better at math, you or your mother?
Kate Sacker: Excuse me?
Mike Prince: What my old man used to say when I'd worked myself into a knot over something. Doesn't matter how good your gut is, don't double down on old instincts when presented with new insight.

Mike Prince: I love that you're loyal. You did right by your boss despite the potential cost to yourself. That's what matters. It's how I know that you'll serve me loyally as well. Until I help get you elected to Congress...

Mike Wagner 'Wags': My guns, they can't be empty!
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: Maybe you'll have a stray bullet left.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': "Him" is me, right? He manipulated me and you're congratulating him for it?
Mike Prince: Absolutely. Always give props to the guy who made the assist. The guy who scored already knows what he did.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': I need a slap on the ass when I score. That's how I'm wired.
Mike Prince: Good job, Wags! Feel better?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Yeah.

Chuck Rhoades: Son of a bitch. They played the Albin on me!... I fancied myself some chess grandmaster and brought my big piece out early. Albin's a hyperaggressive counter. I lost my advantage... and failed to protect my goddamn queen.

Mike Prince: Done. It's not that you weren't transactional. It's that you're very good at it. And for the right reasons... which pleases me.

Taylor Mason: And now they get what? The consolation prize: a free tote bag?
Mike Prince: People love free tote bags. Especially when they don't know what they could have gotten.

Mike Prince: But, come on, what did you think your plan was really going to accomplish long term? What was going to change?
Taylor Mason: You know the answer. With Wi-Fi they could connect to the... I don't have to spell it out for you. You know the answer.
Mike Prince: I do. You know, I've lived through versions of this before. More than that, Africa has. There was a great initiative, with great goodwill and good intentions, to build wells in different places. Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali. More. Ones that really needed it. Only once the wells were built, there was no money to maintain them. So when they broke and fell into disrepair, no one knew how to fix them. The people also became reliant on them. So instead of making things better, the people ended up worse off. This would be like that.

Mike Prince: You'd get them dependent on the connectivity, and then, when it disappeared, they'd be lost.
Taylor Mason: Sure, it's easy to take that position now.
Mike Prince: Nothing easy about it. But I pick and choose my shots to make things better, so that when I do it, it works. It holds. It sticks.

Mike Prince: You have a number.
Taylor Mason: I do.
Mike Prince: Hundred. Gotta be a hundred mil. That's the nine-digit combination that opens the lock to the escape hatch.
Taylor Mason: It is.

Mike Prince: The problem is the number shifts when you see what it can and can't do. I'm at over 10 billion. I'm a philanthropist, like you, yet I haven't left. Your eyes are always bigger than your stomach, and at your level, they should be.

Mike Prince: If this had been my cause, those struggling folks would be getting their Wi-Fi, regardless of the business end, with the money baked in to keep it going. Infrastructure, technicians on payroll to keep it reliable, sustainable, so the well would never run dry. Because even at a 150 mil a year personal OPEX, I can afford it, you can't.
Taylor Mason: So you're trying to turn this into an object lesson on scale.
Mike Prince: Not trying to do anything. That's what it is. I'm independently wealthy. You're not. You're kind of rich, which is great. But if you want to change the world, nine digits ain't gonna do it.

Taylor Mason: I can see that you are right that my number was faulty. I have a new one now.
Mike Prince: A billion...

Kate Sacker: I had the best professor.
Chuck Rhoades: What if that professor isn't done teaching yet?
Kate Sacker: Then he'd better find someone who's still in need of those particular lessons... because this student has already left the campus.

--
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STD

Billions 6×3

Mafee: No worries. It's an STD.
Ben Kim: Uh, what? Gross.
Mafee: A sure thing, dude.
Ben Kim: Oh.

Karl Allerd: Ah, family. Love to see it. Love to leave it behind.

Bonnie Barella: ... And once it IPOs, we can bend this thing over, no lube required, and... I mean, there are many things within SEC guidelines we can do to express our negative sentiment on it, and convince others to see it the same way, once it is trading publicly. There ya go.
Mike Prince: That's where I thought you were going.

Ben Kim: But this is Mafee and Dollar Bill's big investment. Don't we still love... I mean, have fond feelings for... well, most of us... some of us... I do...

Ben Kim: Mafee! I still care about Mafee.

Tuk Lal: How can you not even care? You were in an intimate relationship with Dollar...
Bonnie Barella: I am in a relationship with dollars, end sentence.

Bonnie Barella: Look, I love those guys. For real. We've plundered and partied with 'em back in the day. But if they fuck with our shit, they get fucked.
Mike Prince: Great to see the team spirit is intact.

Todd Krakow: It was an honor to serve, but, frankly, I rather enjoy being back in the private sector. I missed not having to report to anyone.
Mike Prince: We're all accountable to each other and tethered to this rock by gravity. If you take the time to be in the moment... right there, you can even feel the Earth move.

Todd Krakow: .... you may end up having to wait in line to get tickets like the Commoners. Can you imagine?... Usually this is the part where the guy on the other side of the desk flexes, huffs, puffs and makes vague but serious threats.
Mike Prince: I don't go to war that way... I just go to war.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Dior Sauvage! So that was the stench hovering around him like Pig-Pen. We can't trust a man who wears cologne before 10 a.m.

Todd Krakow: May seem weird now, but Mitt Romney was a fucking god when he brought them to Salt Lake. I could use some of that social capital. Turn it into actual capital. Ka-chi--
Chuck Rhoades: Don't make the cash register sound.
Todd Krakow: I would never.

Todd Krakow: Being open and honest has never worked for me, but... I'll try anything.

Ben Kim: ... So then you have to agree we should save them.
Taylor Mason: If they are anti-fragile, they will survive and thrive no matter what Prince does. And if not, well, I have to take the long view.
Ben Kim: So harsh.
Taylor Mason: That's the way of the gun.
Ben Kim: And you're okay with it.
Taylor Mason: The gun doesn't care what I'm okay with.

Mayor Johnson: I'm not interested in what it looks like, and I'm not interested in making the same mistakes as the idiot I replaced.
Mike Prince: The mistake the idiot who came before you made was not caring what stuff looked like. Which is why he left office as a punchline.

Wendy Rhoades: You know who invented steam? John Fitch. Steam power, anyway. The state legislature gave him a 14-year monopoly to come up with a commercial use for it. But Fitch fucked it up, lost the monopoly because he couldn't do it. Steam power transformed the world, but the man who invented it died penniless. Killed himself.

Dollar Bill: How the fuck does Ben Kim know?
Mafee: I didn't tell him anything.
Dollar Bill: You know that this is the moment when the detective realizes you killed the guy, right? No one accused you of anything yet, Mafee, but you're proclaiming your innocence, which tells me you're guilty as fuck.

Scooter: You put this song on your playlist?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Don't tell me you have a problem with Harry Chapin.
Scooter: No, I just didn't realize you had any taste.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Oh... Thanks. I think.
     ♪ While I was away ♪
     ♪ And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew... ♪
Scooter: This song. It used to hit me as the son. Now it hits me as the father.
     ♪ And the cat's in the cradle... ♪
Scooter: You?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Yeah. Both.
     ♪ But we'll get together then ♪
     ♪ You know we'll have a good time then ♪

Wendy Rhoades: We were never trained to be worried about unintended consequences. The win was all that mattered, and our success only reinforced that idea.

Taylor Mason: I keep getting sucked back into the short game, and I promised myself I wouldn't do that anymore.
Wendy Rhoades: To be fair, your short game is everyone else's long game.
Taylor Mason: That only makes it more disappointing.

Mayor Johnson: And how am I not gonna look like a flip-flopper?
Mike Prince: You're gonna look like a brilliant negotiator. You have leveraged the real estate community to band together to build low-income housing unlike the City has seen before.

Chuck Rhoades: What'd Bruce say? "Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air, look for me, Mom, I'll be there."

Chuck Rhoades: What the hell do they know about the real New York? ... Have they at all considered what real New Yorkers want for our city? Maybe we should remind them who we are. Yeah? What do we do when the carpetbaggers and the land barons try to shove us out of the way? We shove back! Yeah! We shove back! And together, the people, and those who represent the people, we will take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city!
— Take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city! Take back our city!

--
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Lyin' Eyes

Billions 6×2

Taylor Mason: It's a "shame and short." The key is to build social pressure that goes beyond the numbers. Make it unacceptable to be seen wearing Rask, let alone holding their shares.

Scooter: Taylor sees it just right. A sportswear brand is the perfect target. Once we expose Rask, their sponsored athletes will swear off the brand, the fans will follow. The stock will be over.

Mike Prince: Why were they pushing back?
Wendy Rhoades: They're concerned they're being sent to charge a machinegun nest for moral reasons. And they don't trust a leader asking them to do that. For profit, for greed, they'll charge like it's the beach at Normandy. But not for a cause.

Chuck Rhoades: I realized it's not one billionaire having his way with the city. That's wrong, but it's not existential. But the overall effect of the billionaire class? They're a scourge. No, I'm gonna get them where they live.

Chuck Rhoades: We're gonna stand this thing on its head.
Kate Sacker: Mamet? Okay. But he pulled that off in a small town. This is New York.
Chuck Rhoades: Well, New York is a lot of small towns stitched together.

Rian: ... I hate being right and not being able to prove it. That's what the money is, proof. Let's mukbang the whole sector.

Chuck Rhoades: Sunburn, windburn, or whiskey?
Bud Lazarra: It's all three. Surf, turf, and Glenlivet. Most of us skipped town for Covid. Here the Hamptons, Vail, Caribbean. They even let some especially high-net-worth individuals into New Zealand. So the doormen had the easiest workday they've ever seen.

Bud Lazarra: I might find your antics amusing if they weren't such a nuisance. It's like getting your house egged on All Hallow's Eve. But your scheme won't work, Rhoades.
Kate Sacker: He gets that a lot.
Chuck Rhoades: Hmm. And from men even more entitled than yourself.
Kate Sacker: Hmm. And they do work, so... you might want to think about that.
Chuck Rhoades: Yeah. And we expect timely payment.

Mike Prince: AOC just tweeted. She blasted Rask.

Mike Prince: Why are we huddling up? Play's already been called.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Just readying the team to cover their positions as soon as the stock hits $15. For a nice tidy profit.
Mike Prince: I didn't buy Axe Cap for tidy. I want a big, sloppy profit. In your words, Wags, "A monster pig. A Hogzilla." Everyone, hold till the stock dips under five.

Mike Prince: You created this problem, fix it.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': How can I fix it?
Mike Prince: If I asked you that question, you'd say I'm a resourceful motherfucker.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': I can be. I am. ... I might. Yeah. But to do Stu dirty like that...

Rhoades, Sr.: What cockamamie scheme do you have cooking in that Crock-Pot of a head of yours now, Sonny?
Chuck Rhoades: It is the first battle in the new war I'm waging, against the billionaires, the criminal class. And I'm starting with the doormen.

Rhoades, Sr.: Ah, hell. My doorman is perfectly happy. He always has a big smile on his face when he greets me.
Chuck Rhoades: That is his job, Dad. And you will have to pay the bill, just as soon as Bud Lazarra cracks.

Rhoades, Sr.: Son, do you remember the first summer that we took the house at the Vineyard? You were probably five or six. ... You were a feeble swimmer, at best. Finally, one day, you got out past the shore break to the calmer water. You turned to show me, big, proud smile on your face. You didn't see the wave coming.
Chuck Rhoades: And you didn't warn me?
Rhoades, Sr.: Warn you?! I clapped and kept your attention on me until the wave came and wiped you out completely. I knew it was a lesson you needed to learn the hard way.
Chuck Rhoades: I got infections in both ears.
Rhoades, Sr.: So, now you oughta know, don't turn your back on oceanic forces.

Chuck Rhoades: I appreciate the warning as a gesture of goodwill. And a mark of the beginning of a new phase of our relationship. But you and I both know when I get big game in my sights... I can't lower my rifle.
Rhoades, Sr.: Well, in that case, my boy, I wish you luck. I'll don my blaze orange... and step out of the line of fire.

Chuck Rhoades: That flush on your face is that, uh, surf, turf or something else?

Kate Sacker: Are you sure painting targets on our backs is the best move right now?
Chuck Rhoades: No more skeletons in my closets to rattle. Let 'em just try and Spitzer me.

Rian: Leaving money on the table is like seeing a punch buggy and not punching someone. It just feels wrong.

Kate Sacker: I'm trying to think like Hackman in Heist, to understand ... and I am coming up dry.
Chuck Rhoades: Well, something my father taught me long ago. Sometimes, you just have to break some shit. Find out the strength of the reaction on the other side. Use your will. Not your wits. And make them know your moves can't be anticipated. That no one is safe.
Kate Sacker: I'm not sure that old school crap is still gonna play.
Chuck Rhoades: The old school crap plays like Bobby Short. You just have to know when.

Kate Sacker: Okay, Boss.

Taylor Mason: You saw the news about the games? Prince isn't just playing the markets. His chessboard is much bigger, and I don't think he's done making his moves yet.

Mike Prince: When I'm done, this city will look very different. ....
Andy Salter: It's a lot of work, Mike.
Mike Prince: The city's down, busted up, hurting. It's the perfect opportunity to rebuild. Every time New York has fallen...
Andy Salter: It has been lifted up and rebuilt by a great man. And that's you this time.

Taylor Mason: All of this is some big romantic gesture?
Wendy Rhoades: That, or he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Taylor Mason: And what would that mean, in Prince's case?
Wendy Rhoades: He thinks he's better than everyone else. And he won't stop till he gets what he wants.

--
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Cannonade

Billions 6×1

Wendy Rhoades: Focus. Detachment from all else.
That Buddhist shit.
Wendy Rhoades: If I can only put everything... right here. Right at the tip of my consciousness.
Then you are gonna make hella good ice cream.
Wendy Rhoades: Then I'm... maybe can work myself out of my...
Don't think. Just do.
Wendy Rhoades: Ah. There's that Buddhist shit again.

Mike Prince: Use this for a month, check in on yourself, see if you don't agree.
Ben Kim: When you say, "use this," is that like, uh, "if you choose to use this," or "you have to use this?"

Mike Prince: Look, I know this place used to operate in the red zone. I don't do red zone. So talk to me.
Bonnie Barella: Ain't ratting or being ratted on.

Rian: Taylor comes and goes as they wish. Wherever they are in the world, they produce results. Kind of like how Dwayne "The Rock" can show up late to a film shoot because his movies always do, like, a billion dollars.

Mike Prince: When I announce an all-hands, I need...
Taylor Mason: I know what you need. Or what you claim to need. Bracing honesty. But when people say that, what they really want is someone to tousle their hair and tell them, "good boy."

Chuck Rhoades: You'd think a place this grand, it would suck up the sound. But it's a funny thing about gunpowder and sky, one offers little resistance to the other.
Melville Revere: That's the thing about a cannon, nothing much offers it resistance. That's why I have such regard for their power.

Melville Revere: A smart man once said, "Nothing external affects how you feel. You control how you feel." So I say this, "When you hear the sound of the cannon, why don't you hear what I do?" The sound of liberty, of triumph. Of America! You can make yourself process it that way.
Chuck Rhoades: Hmmmm. Seems like an awful lot of work.

Chuck Rhoades: Whatever. I didn't come looking for a war.
Melville Revere: Well I, on the other hand, have always regretted I didn't get a chance to fight in mine.

Bonnie Barella: We used to work for a killer, now we've got a guy who wants to know how we "feel."
Tuk Lal: Why is he asking for our guidance? Why doesn't he know what to do?
Victor Mateo: Point me at a hill, tell me to take the hill. That's what I want in a general.
Ben Kim: I must admit, Axe's ruthlessness was almost... reassuring.
Scooter: This might not be salvageable.

Mike Prince: Well, if anyone can guide me there, it's you. You're the magic sauce, aren't you?
Wendy Rhoades: Special sauce. Magic touch.
Mike Prince: I don't get nervous. You make me nervous. Like you can see through me.
Wendy Rhoades: That's a good technique. But you're not nervous. And you said "magic sauce" on purpose to give me the power in the conversation.

Scooter: We can't have invaded your privacy. You invited us in. Each of you gave permission when you launched the app and clicked agree.
Tuk Lal: Everyone always just clicks agree. You tricked us!
Taylor Mason: Not everyone, Tuk. I put mine on my dog's collar the night we got 'em.

Kate Sacker: Whenever your sabbatical...
Chuck Rhoades: Nope, not a sabbatical. This clean air gets a person thinking. That's what I'm doing.
Kate Sacker: ... How long do you imagine...
Chuck Rhoades: Until I figure out how to actually get something done from that chair behind my desk. You've known me a long time, and you know I don't shy from battle. But pointless battle? It's not my jam. Neither is losing, being thwarted, or spitting into the wind. So, I'll be back when I see a road to victory. And likely not sooner.

Mike Prince: Oh. Mr. Revere's cannonballs and gunpowder got wet?
Scooter: The shed where he stores his ammo was flooded by a stream he shares with a neighbor, so he couldn't fire off his morning blast-- Not a phrase I use often, but... white people problems.
Mike Prince: Truly.

Mike Prince: Did Wendy feel so incentivized?
Scooter: You know how in, like, old Andy Capp cartoons when the character curses?
Mike Prince: She let out a stream of pound signs and asterisks?
Scooter: And alphasands. What we now call the "at" sign. The verbal equivalent.

Mike Prince: I'm unlike the man who came before me. I will never give you a legal opening because I do not break the law.
Chuck Rhoades: Billionaires break the laws of decency, even while obeying the letter. By definition, having that much is criminal.

Chuck Rhoades: ... I find myself unwilling to help you.

Mike Prince: It's not Cincinnatus you're fashioning yourself after, I get that now. It's more Manius Curius Dentatus. "I see no glory in having money myself, but in commanding those that do."

Mike Prince: Look, I give you forty million. We're free, but it sucks a little for both of us.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': The definition of a real compromise.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': And also... Yes! I need this place. Like Gere needed OCS in Gent. But you fuckers need me too.
Mike Prince: Maybe. But trust is the problem.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Oh, over time, I'm sure you'll earn my trust.
Mike Prince: They keep saying that...

Mike Prince: Let's look at the prevailing winds. The prevailing feeling in the country about wealth. I think it's largely right... Too much is concentrated in the hands of too few. But let's not blame those who manage that wealth for them. Let's instead look to those who profit the most... As one of them, I understand the temptation more than almost anyone can. And it's true. Many of the wealthiest have misused their resources. Many have cut corners. We will not... In fact, we won't take their money. I'm not firing them, my employees. I'm firing you, my investors....

Melville Revere: Hold on a second, I'm in a wholly different...
Mike Prince: Different but the same. The controversy you're in the middle of, it's too hot, and you're on the wrong side of it. But it's also your company. We don't want a security contractor who sells pepper spray and rubber bullets around here. We don't want to make you richer.

Mike Prince: It may feel like we just cut our capital by two-thirds, but, remember, the one thing billionaires hate is being left out. Excluded. So sit back and watch how badly people want to get on the Prince List.

Chuck Rhoades: Now that right there is a species unto itself: the entitled billionaire. He and those like him are why I find myself farming and not prosecuting. Because while I might be able to tangle with and prevail against a billionaire as a private citizen with common sense in the name of nature and the will of these fine people by my side... I certainly can't as the Attorney General of the State of New York with the pathetic laws at my disposal.

Chuck Rhoades: You wanted your war, you got it.

Chuck Rhoades: Ah, what do you say to one last for old time's sake? Fire in the hole...

--
On the IMDb
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No Direction Home

Billions 5×12

Orrin Bach: You want to talk worst-case scenarios? Okay. But it'll be a mood killer.
Wendy Rhoades: It's hard to kill what's already dead, Orrin.

Bobby Axelrod: How many years am I facing?
Orrin Bach: We'll pick off the shakier aspects of the case. We'll claim there were efforts made to conceal by Winslow.
Hall: We'll work the jury pool for maximum weakness and/or affinity--
Bobby Axelrod: Worst. Case. Don't make me say it again. Now. How many years?
Orrin Bach: Fifteen, 20, likely, for you as the chairman. For the CEO...
Mike Wagner 'Wags': But I hardly had a chance to do anything! I'm a figurehead. You know it. I know it. They definitely know it.
Hall: They don't give a shit, Wags.
Orrin Bach: No, they don't. Your name's on the contract as CEO, Wags. You signed. It was notarized. So you take the weight right along with Bobby.

Orrin Bach: Fast or slow... how do you want to play it?
Bobby Axelrod: Let 'em bring it. Let's get it on.

Bobby Axelrod: I'm gonna fight it loudly and publicly. And once and for all, because he's in my way now, on things that are even more important than business. So push the timeline on this, Orrin. Fast. The arrest, the battle, the victory.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I can't. There's no scenario where I survive a year in jail, much less what we're looking at here.

Bobby Axelrod: You are a lot stronger than you think you are.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': I know exactly how strong I am, and it's one notch less than strong enough for jail.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Axe, I worship at your altar, sir. But I'm telling you right now, I'm never walking into a jail cell with my name on it. Whatever I have to do, I'll do it.

Bobby Axelrod: I wanted a conscious... a beginning. I pictured thatched huts over blue water. Not courtrooms. Board shorts. Not suits and ties.
Wendy Rhoades: Yeah, well, that's the thing about something real. It doesn't have to look like a fantasy.

Mike Prince: What do you have planned? The lefty guns scoop up while he's about to do a job, or the shake-and-wake while he's in bed?
Chuck Rhoades: I considered all of it. But I want it to be at the office. I walk him out rear-cuffed in front of his loyal troops. Let them see him broken. Let that break them.

Chuck Rhoades: Once I have everything in order, and I will, quite soon, it'll happen. Mr. Axelrod will surrender to me.
Bobby Axelrod: That's a legal term, to be clear, Chuck. So I will. Technically. But know this... I will be fighting you to my dying breath.

Chuck Rhoades: Believe me, I'm taking fucking measures.
Taylor Mason: I hope so. Because a wounded and cornered Bobby Axelrod is not something many survive.

Rian: I don't hate.
Taylor Mason: You do. You've turned it into something else. Like I used to. But it was impressed upon me that instead, and listen to me here... instead, it's best turned into fuel because it's effective. And nothing burns as clean.

Ben Kim: It feels like we're at the end.
Bobby Axelrod: Nah, the end of the beginning is all, Ben Kim.

Bobby Axelrod: Your problem, as an investor, is that your idealism is at war with your profit drive. And one day that will ruin you.
Taylor Mason: While your problem, as a boss, as a mentor, as a person, is you see my work product, my company, me, as yours to do with as you see fit.
Bobby Axelrod: And so now you've killed your mentor. Congratulations.

Taylor Mason: I think I'm... No, I am sorry. Sorry that it came to this.
Bobby Axelrod: You're sorry? Shit. You'll get over it. The amount of time you spend feeling bad over slitting your enemies' throats will get shorter and shorter in the future until it's barely a fucking blip.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': You're talking about me cooperating against Axe?
Chuck Rhoades: I am. Spare us the time and effort of feigning loyalty. Just shed that dry, flaking skin like the reptile you are and slither away shiny and new.

Bobby Axelrod: That's what I've always been to you. A trophy. The trophy. You can't make anything, build anything, earn anything on your own. So you try to boost yourself up by tearing me down.

Chuck Rhoades: Guys like you... No, you. You've accumulated so much you think laws don't apply to you. And I'm not talking about the laws of man, the ones written down on paper. I'm talking about the immutable laws of the universe. About fairness and right.
Bobby Axelrod: Who says we have to live by those? Maybe we can create our own, if we have the audacity. And who appointed you the keeper of these cosmic rules in the first place? The fucking arrogance!
Chuck Rhoades: On my part? You're the one who just said you created your own system of right and wrong, like some fucking deity.
Bobby Axelrod: I didn't presume to that. I arrived at it.

Chuck Rhoades: A Titan steals fire and gets his liver eaten every day for punishment. Another one picks the wrong side in a war and has to hold the world on his shoulders for all time. A king tells a secret and has to push a rock up a hill for his trouble. Believe it if you will, or look for the metaphor in it, one thing's for sure. We are not very good at being fucking happy, are we?
Bobby Axelrod: Happy... What's that?

Chuck Rhoades: Un-fucking-believable! You actually believe you're innocent. Well, I might not have known until right now just how badly you need to go down.
Bobby Axelrod: Oh, you're gonna learn just how innocent I am when that jury foreman reads it out in open court for the whole fucking world to hear!
Chuck Rhoades: Well, we'll see about that, soon enough.
Bobby Axelrod: Yes. We will.

Taylor Mason: What I told you before about using the hate... it may work for you. But I should never have said it.
Rian: No?
Taylor Mason: No. The advice I should have given you about working here... or anywhere in this business really, if remaining resemblant to the person you are now matters to you at all... is what Agatha the Precog tells Anderton.
Rian: Run.
Taylor Mason: Run.

Orrin Bach: There's no way to say this without it coming off as a bit dramatic... It's time to surrender, Bobby.

Rhoades, Sr.: Oh, shit. You actually have him this time. That's why you're here. This is beyond crowing. You've actually won, haven't you?.. That also means that I backed the wrong gladiator.

Rhoades, Sr.: Bring me my daughter. Leave her with me. I need to tell her a few things... Firstly, your brother may not always be a good man. But he is indeed... a very great man.

Mike Prince: I assure you, I take no pleasure...
Bobby Axelrod: No, no, of course not. That would be indecorous. No, it's fine to set a guy up, lead him to slaughter, but to laugh... that's the line, huh?

Mike Prince: ... Can you do six? Could I? I don't know. The pandemic felt like solitary, and I had cars and planes and five properties to choose from. But every man has to answer that question for himself.

Bobby Axelrod: That's a steep discount you want. Pennies on the fuckin' dollar.
Mike Prince: Guys with sucking chest wounds should save their breath and not try to negotiate. Your billions, they're gone.

Bobby Axelrod: It feels, um... Wow. So this is what it is to lose. Okay.

Bobby Axelrod: So you get it all? My money. My companies. My people. Win, win, win. And me nowhere to be found.
Mike Prince: Yes. That I consider a win.

Chuck Rhoades: Ms. Sacker, Mrs. Gramm, when someone leaves a burning sack of excrement on your doorstep and rings your doorbell, it's best not to stomp it out, lest you get covered in shit.

Bobby Axelrod: I used to think it was a total waste of $60 million...
Hall: The third plane? Of course it's a waste, just like everything in the top right corner of the risk and control matrix. Right up until you need it.

Hall: ..... I'll have things taken care of on the other end long before you land. It's good to be the king.

Chuck Rhoades: It's done! Fall back! But start thinking of the next move, and the move after because done does not mean finished. Not in this case.

Wendy Rhoades: You're talking in generalities, like a... like a politician or something. Talk to me like Axe would.

Bobby Axelrod: If we can't finish it, we can't start it.

Mike Prince: "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year." Emerson said that. And if every day is such, then even this, yes, this is such a day, too.

Mike Prince: You'll find I don't much speak about things that way, about who gets what, who shined by closing such and such deal, but I think it is important, crucial even, to begin by stating in the most plain terms what this is. And what this is... is mine. Oh, hey, this is Scooter. You may come to think of him as my Wags.
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: Better dressed, better mannered. Perhaps not quite as much fun at an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet or a mud wrestling establishment, which are things of the past, anyway, but still pretty fun.

Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: Anyone who wants to get wealthy... rich, in your language... can stay, and we can discuss your place in the new organization. Otherwise, now is a good time to leave...

Mike Prince: Well, Chuck, I was never really in your ranks. Never in lockstep. We just had a similar problem for a while.
Chuck Rhoades: Uh-huh. Now, you're my problem. And you know what I do to problems.
Mike Prince: Let 'em fester?
Chuck Rhoades: No. I do what I did to the last guy who sat in that chair. I get rid of them.
Mike Prince: No. I got rid of the guy in the chair. Know how we know this to be true?... 'Cause I'm the one sitting in it.
Chuck Rhoades: Not for long, pal. Not for fucking long.

--
On the IMDb
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Victory Smoke

Billions 5×11

Wendy Rhoades: You just see an angle...
Rhoades, Sr.: So I have to play it.
Wendy Rhoades: What do you want?
Rhoades, Sr.: I want... to be 20 years younger. I'll take money and power.

Wendy Rhoades: Can we just skip the middle stages of this negotiation, please?
Rhoades, Sr.: Meaningful profit share... But I'll-I'll be honest with you. I feel less good about all this now. And that's not posturing. It's one thing to go against your own son. But when it's with his ex, and mortal enemy...
Wendy Rhoades: Well, knowing you as I do, I imagine when I get you your profit share, this goes away.
Rhoades, Sr.: Yeah... Knowing me as you do, I'd think so too.

Chelsea: Are you sure you're ready?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': "I'm ready for anything" is basically my first, middle and last name.
Chelsea: Even meeting my father? Most guys don't want to.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Right. The dad dinner. Sure.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I'll look him in the eye, give him a firm handshake, and assure him my intentions are honourable.
Chelsea: He'll see right through that act. He's a lawyer, so he's spent his life slicing through bullshit artists. He can look at people and know what's really inside of them. He's self-made. Tough.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Chuck Norris tough or Guido the killer pimp?
Chelsea: See, he'll get that reference, probably, and know if it's good.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': So I earn his respect by going toe to toe. Like a fighter.
Chelsea: No, kiss his ass. But do it well.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Ah. Trombone blown, Tom Byron-style. You got it.
Chelsea: Another reference I don't... The important thing is he will.

Karl Allerd: The thing about arguments before SCOTUS is they are never about what they're purported to be about. Neither are the opinions or dissents, but everyone just presses forward.

Dollar Bill: Are those them?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': These... are the Glengarry leads. But do not try to steal them. They will be handed out to closers, which, unlike Dave Moss and Charlie Levine, you will be because Axe is.

Mafee: Give me one of those, I'll light it up right here, deal with the smoke alarms and fines later.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': We'll smoke them when Red Auerbach did: The moment victory is in hand, when our bank is solvent, not when the game is still in doubt.

Chuck Rhoades: You can't really say you're playing unless you're willing to put your highest-value pieces on the board.
Mike Prince: They're not pieces. They're my children. My first charge in this world is to protect them, not set them off like flashbang grenades.
Chuck Rhoades: You are protecting them. Better, you're arming them to protect themselves.
Mike Prince: Yes, a consequence of this action might be that they become wary, less open. That may be of some benefit in business. But I'm not doing this as a teaching tool. I'm doing it for my own aims and that is too bitter a lesson.
Chuck Rhoades: You can't safeguard your kids from pain. But you can protect them from evil. And we both know that's what Axe is. And that's what a world is that bows before him. They're how he knows you're serious. And that it hurts you to use them... that's why you're the man you are.

Kate Sacker: Excuse me. I have to go.
Chuck Rhoades: Ms. Sacker?
Kate Sacker: It's nothing.
Chuck Rhoades: Is that right? Why don't you fill me in on the exact brand of nothing?

Chuck Rhoades: You gotta let him dangle.
Kate Sacker: Chuck...
Chuck Rhoades: Whole operation gets blown if one piece gets out of order.
Kate Sacker: Shit!

Wendy Rhoades: It's not fucking time!
Ben Kim: That's what Wags said at first, but then he passed them out to us.
Wendy Rhoades: Because we won a round. Back in your pockets. You can hold on to 'em now but don't smoke 'em till Axe gives the word.

Bobby Axelrod: You ever been to Fiji?.... The ocean there's the exact same temperature as the air. And so when you walk into the water, you don't even feel it.
Wendy Rhoades: Fiji sounds...
Bobby Axelrod: Yeah. As soon as I get a clean bill of health. But first, victory smokes.

Kate Sacker: ... As to why I need this done? Family shit.
Mary Ann Gramm: I thank God every day I grew up medium-poor. The ones with the Tiffany rattles could never stop warring with their own.
Kate Sacker: Hmm. You know nothing about how I grew up. Yeah, we had some money. But I had to prove that I deserved my spot in the world every single day, much as you did in a different way. You don't go into the justice business because it's a fair world, you do it because you want to make it one.

Kate Sacker: I helped sell it...
Chuck Rhoades: You may be right. But don't act like that's why you did it.
Kate Sacker: We don't all enjoy sending our fathers to the wolves.
Chuck Rhoades: We don't. But we do it, because we not only accomplish whatever we were after, we get the thing they wouldn't give us any other way... respect.

Mike Prince: I've heard many times about Axe, the thought leader, the man ahead of the curve, doing his own thing. I don't know if he ever existed, but I haven't seen him. The Axe I'm acquainted with is a pirate, or in the lingua franca of your beloved New York streets, a goniff. You tried to steal from me again. It didn't work. .... And you know what you wound up with? Nothing in your hand but moonlight.
Bobby Axelrod: I have strings attached to all of my fingers. When I yank 'em, you are gonna shake, rattle, and shit yourself.

Rian: I can't sit on this if I wanna keep working here. And I think I want to keep working here. But if I talk about it, maybe I can't work here anyway. What type of a paradox is that?
Wendy Rhoades: One that probably only gets better if you take a deep breath... and actually tell me.

Rian: I don't wanna work in a place with secrets, lies, backstabbing, side-stabbing, any stabbing.
Wendy Rhoades: Understandable. So I know how best to handle this. Are you confiding it to me in session or are you reporting to me as your boss at Mase Carbon?
Rian: Whoa. You have made your life very complicated. I'm trying to make mine less so by offloading this. So... good luck with all of that.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I get it... If you and Axe are gonna have another kind of thing, you need to make peace with who he is and stop trying to change him. Is that what's going on? Have you made that peace?

Taylor Mason: I want to believe the best of you because that's the kind of world I want to live in.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Every great love story springs from the forbidden... comes true against all obstacles of good family and good taste because sometimes a heart finds another heart it needs to be with.

Taylor Mason: Axe swallowed it. He actually closed on that money.
Kate Sacker: Didn't do his own due diligence, just accepted Prince's and took it down like sushi laced with polonium.
Chuck Rhoades: Wouldn't have happened without the efforts of everyone in this room.
Mike Prince: Or without great personal cost.
Chuck Rhoades: As all great triumphs require.

Mafee: God, it just feels like old times. You know, there's been so much shit, so much bad blood. But a pure win like this, after all we've been through? Fuck, I miss these days.

Ari Spyros: The estimable Zino Davidoff once said, "A cigar ought not to be smoked solely with the mouth, but with the hand, with the eyes, with the spirit."
Dollar Bill: Oh, Jesus.
Ben Kim: Wow.
Ari Spyros: I believe a good cigar and glass of wine and a good conversation is as close to euphoria as one can get. In a legal sense.
Mafee: Davidoff again?
Ari Spyros: Sly Stallone.
Tuk: Are these going to your head? They're going to my head.
Ben Kim: You're smoking a little fast.
Tuk: I'm excited.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': What do you want us to do?
Bobby Axelrod: I have no fucking idea.

--
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Liberty

Billions 5×10

Wendy Rhoades: It's not a real painting.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Is if Axe says it is. That's a great thing about abstract art; who knows what Tanner intended?

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Don't try to slink away just yet. We have an announcement.
Bobby Axelrod: So first of all, if you have been vaccinated, take off your mask...

Mick Danzig: Where are you?
Bobby Axelrod: I'm in quarantine. Day before I was due to get my shot, I tested positive for COVID. My fuckin' pilot gave it to me. So those of you with your masks off, we've vaxxed ya'. As many as we could find loopholes for.

Bobby Axelrod: If we didn't vax ya' yet, well, let me just say this to all of you: It's been inspiring as hell watching you all battle on during the worst of the pandemic. Inspiring commitment. Just the same, you're all fired. Every last one of you. Axe Cap is closed.

Bobby Axelrod: The world has changed. We have to change. We have already changed.

Taylor Mason: Psychiatrists will tell you reassurance does no good, because once reassured, you are not becalmed for long. Instead, you become trained to need more reassurance.

Chuck Rhoades: No, no, no, don't do that with your fingers, like that. No, you forget germs?

Chuck Rhoades: Well, welcome to my home, Mike. And to this chapter of a great tradition, the Jeffersonian dinner. A further evolution of it anyway, aided by WebEx. Though separated by circumstance, there's no reason our exchange of ideas has to be... Ah! And we will dine as the founders did, with heritage birds. Has the same unaltered genetic makeup as the turkeys that roam the Shenandoah Valley in Long Tom's day, as my remote emissaries have set up for you...
Mike Prince: I'm surprised you're not in a powdered wig and tricorn.
Bob Sweeney: Don't think he didn't consider it.
Chuck Rhoades: We will honor this custom going back to the days of the founders when leading citizens, both public and private, reviewed and sometimes set the agenda of the day. This will be a "one mind" conversation with everyone taking turns, no real interlocution or crosstalk except by me. I will be our guide. And tonight's topic is... Liberty.

Tuk: That sounds... Well, I'll just say it... Over the line.
Bobby Axelrod: In our world, you're either driven by greed or fear. If you picked fear, I don't know why you're even in that fucking building.

Bobby Axelrod: It's a fucking attack on me. I'm gonna Sherlock Holmes this thing until I figure it out.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Hard Bob... I thought the usual whiff of bullshit had dissipated. My mind is a repository of FDIC rules and regs. I don't need any help. But I will certainly ask you if I do.
Robert Beaufort: How will fee structure and annual percentage rate calculations be disclosed to consumers to ensure compliance with the truth in lending statutes?...
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Let's not bore the lady with these tedious questions. Come with me. I will parry these softballs and more... Let me handle this tinhorn. Why don't you make a TikTok or something?

Rian: Uh... I'm not working for a bank. Banks are bad. Not good bad or fun bad, just bad. And boring.

Taylor Mason: God never made any sense to me. Neither did heaven or hell. But the markets do. You are punished or rewarded as you deserve. It's not up to anyone's whim. That's the kind of stability I can devote my life to.

Rhoades, Sr.: We used to call it Mary Jane, sometimes tea. But whatever you put in your pipe and smoke, that's what they are arguing about right now.
Bobby Axelrod: Cannabis?
Rhoades, Sr.: That's what the marketers want you to call it, yeah.

Lauren Turner: You talk a big game about worshipping logic, clean, emotionless simplicity. But every move you make comes from a personal pain so deep you can't even recognize it.

--
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Implosion

Billions 5×9

Bobby Axelrod: Get me to see Taleb. Gotta make sure this thing's a real black swan event.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': High priest. There's no profit at the end of this call sheet. No money to be made. My one job is to help you do your job. And right now...

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Can I talk to you like you talk to me? I'm gonna talk to you like you talk to me.
Bobby Axelrod: This is to what? Refocus my lens?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': That it is. ..... What I'm really searching for is a pattern in the madness. But all I'm seein' is the madness.
Bobby Axelrod: Hmm. The reason I can talk like that... Well, there are myriad reasons, none of which you'd understand. As you don't understand why my moves right now are the very acme of sanity. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Now do my bidding. And get me Taleb. Let's go.

Mike Prince: A second-tier event might as well not exist. Cancel it.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': But Prince is done. He's bled out. And you're calling in favors for what? So you can fuck a dead guy's skull? Michael Douglas only talked about it in The Bible. He didn't do it. Besides, skullfuckery is not even fun to watch... Okay. That part is a lie.
Bobby Axelrod: He's not dead till I say he's dead.

Chuck Rhoades: My mistake doesn't have to snowball into our mistake.
Mr. Moody: There's no legal basis for this...
Chuck Rhoades: No. It would be a favor.
Kate Sacker: Which we tend to repay.
Chuck Rhoades: No, not tend to. Always will, and always have. Favors are not asked lightly and will not be ignored.

Mr. Moody: You think this is the state that Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours built, with the cousin marrying and the wrestler murdering and all that French aristocracy nonsense? The glass shards on top of the wall, keep the lesser family out? No. This is the state that was built on corporations getting what they need, which is freedom from the yoke of tax burden.

Mr. Moody: I don't believe corporations are people. They're better than people, because they don't fuck up when they get so obsessed with one thing they can't see reality. So no, I'm not gonna participate in your agenda, while mine is part of a bigger economy... But do consider shopping for some tax-free, high-end electronics before you go.

Mike Prince: But who do you want in your corner? Someone who's never put money before humanity? Or do you want someone who knows the cost of putting humanity aside, and how it'll break you?

Mike Prince: Perfect people don't exist. But flawed people... who have taken a walk through their own wounded psyche, reforged themselves and come out stronger? We're the great hope for the species.

Mike Prince: It's your money. You can take it right now, and you could walk out this door. Leave while I'm down. .... But power is atomic. And eventually, this moment, this moment where one electron is slightly out of whack, will end, the world will right itself again. I'll be on top again. And the curious thing is that I will have forgotten your name. I don't believe in enemies. It's not that I don't have them, it's that when you become my enemy, my next move, my only move, is to continue to rise. While you will eddy. Sink. Not by my hand but by your lack of connection to me.
     So walk out with your money. It's yours. But you won't be done with me. As the song goes: "On every wall in place my fearsome name will be heard. I'm the atomic punk." I will remain so. And you, Matt, will simply evaporate.

Mike Prince: I'm not doing that again.
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: The save or the beat down? Because it was gorgeous.

Kate Sacker: I need to know: what is the plan, or the next move in the plan, or the next step in the move of the plan?

Chuck Rhoades: No, Moody is right. I made this shit soup, and now I have to sip it.
Kate Sacker: Fine. You want to act existential, does not mean that I have to.
Chuck Rhoades: No act. No, this right here, is what my alienist would call Anhedonia. The kind of paralysis that can only come when every move you make hurts. Wendy's gone. Her successor, also gone. Meanwhile, my enemies thrive.
Kate Sacker: If we can pause with the Freudian analysis...
Chuck Rhoades: Ribot came up with the concept. Freud got all the glory. So the least we can do is give ol' Theodule his credit where it's due.
Kate Sacker: Okay, back from Europe to here in NYC....

Mike Prince: I want a path back to goodness. A way to be a force for good again.
Brenda Fells: Yeah, I know you do, Michael.
Mike Prince: You do?
Brenda Fells: Yeah. But I can't be the subject of that, or the object, or the road map. I mean, I can point you in the right direction... Stop ruining good people because you think you're better than them. You're not better than anyone.

Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: We can't take a billion dollar plus loss so you can assuage your guilt over something you can't go back and change.
Mike Prince: Right now, this company is the house built on a Native American burial ground. It doesn't matter how good the house is. We have to start from scratch.

Bobby Axelrod: There's no such thing as bad fucking luck, not when money's involved.

Ben Kim: Okay, this is a satellite snapshot of every ship at sea, updated every 20 minutes.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': So where the fuck are our pizzas?
Ben Kim: Forty-four degrees, 32 minutes, 23.8 seconds North by 25 degrees, seven minutes, 51.6 seconds West-- North Atlantic Ocean-- The ship carrying your pizzas broke down two hours ago.

Chuck Rhoades: Some would argue that by virtue of just how much money you have, you have by definition done much wrong.
Mike Prince: So because I'm so rich, I'm inherently guilty?
Chuck Rhoades: It's what I built a good chunk of my career on. Probably what drove me to that career. But I do believe you just said it better than I did.
Mike Prince: Wealth is always going to exist. Power along with it. People are so consumed with the idea that money buys freedom that they can't demand better of the powerful... or themselves. As soon as they gain some power of their own, they forget about better and just want to be rich. So the powerful have to demand it of ourselves. That's what I was trying to do. I can't save the world, but I was gonna leave it a lot better than I found it.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I have been charged with delivering your pizza empire, so to speak, and deliver it I fucking will, on time.
Paul 'Manz' Manzarello: How?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Now tell me. Why Italy?
Paul 'Manz' Manzarello: The ovens.

Bobby Axelrod: Ten million to not let Mike Prince win a round? Consider the money spent.

Chuck Rhoades: Okay, we're in.
Mike Prince: ... You knew. When you told me to blow, you knew I'd come back with something. I've seen Cop Land.
Chuck Rhoades: Did I? I thought I meant it at the time. But we're here now...

Mike Prince: Yeah, we'll need someone who's served on a bank board. Someone who's known for being tough on the institutions they're a board member of, not a yes man. Someone who won't care if they get booted a few months in due to politics. Someone who will go down swinging.
Chuck Rhoades: Oh, I have just the guy...

Chuck Rhoades: Positive reinforcement never has been your raison d'être. No, you love power via destruction, a motivation you have handed down to me.... The chance to be in the game, to fuck with someone else's power and take it for yourself, you can't deny that would feel good.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Nothing is hard to believe if you have the will to make it happen.

Bobby Axelrod: Do we get to see a shortlist?... That is a short fucking list.
Mr. Moody: Charles Rhoades Senior has been selected and approved.

Bobby Axelrod: We'll appeal this decision. I'll sue you.
Mr. Moody: Oh, I imagine you will. Well, I guess I will see you across a courtroom to hash this out... in 18 months to two years, when the case finally comes up for trial. In the meantime, please see that Mr. Rhoades is welcome. Gentlemen.

Dr. Swerdlow: Nice fucking job getting him up the list. One month from now, these hospitals, they're gonna be overrun with that damn Chinese bug.

Chuck Rhoades: Axe delivered my father something that at this moment transcends even my familial bond. He gave him life. And so he became the son I couldn't be... My father is owned by him now.

Mike Prince: When he wants something, he's blind to everything else.

Mike Prince: I'm the bait, and the bank is the trap.

Taylor Mason: How are we taking down Bobby Axelrod?

--
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Copenhagen

Billions 5×1

Mike Wagner 'Wags': I spent the last 18 hours in a whirlwind of Mike Prince research-wining, dining, drugging, grooming, levering, horse-trading...
Bobby Axelrod: And the dividend?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Prince keeps himself locked down Fort Knox-style. But one Roger Dunbar, known to you as Scooter, is our way in...

Bobby Axelrod: Nail him to the pyre, douse him with oil, and light his ass up.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Yes. Joan of Arc style. But first... a quick nap.

Wendy Rhoades: Just... if you're not used to it, the money talk from my colleagues can be relentless, shameless, suffocating.
Nico Tanner: Ah. You know, only rich people get embarrassed by money talk. The rest of us get embarrassed because we don't have any money.

Nico Tanner: How much you make?
Wendy Rhoades: Really?
Nico Tanner: Yeah. It'll clarify things.
Wendy Rhoades: My bonus was $9 million last year.
Nico Tanner: Jesus.

Wendy Rhoades: I guess I'm just saying, beware.
Nico Tanner: Yeah, I hear you. It's just that now that I have a little bit of it, that money, I... it's startin' to feel like freedom.

Rian: You're my boss, but not a king. You don't own my time. We have a work relationship. Let's keep it that way. Cool? Kewl. That time I said it with the K and W spelling. Could you hear it?

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Give up Prince.
Roger 'Scooter' Dunbar: Nothin' to give.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': He may be the best at bleaching. But no one gets to 11 figures clean. Go home. Remember the thing. Come tell Axe and me. And your life stays the same. Don't, and you lose everything you hold sacred.

Chuck Rhoades: I didn't like the circumstances you left under.
Merle Howard: Never bad to march with your conscience intact.
Chuck Rhoades: Not sure I agree with that. Conscience can be a little bit like those old nonstick pans. Flakes off under heat. Produces noxious fumes that ruin the whole enterprise.

Chuck Rhoades: The wisdom from down the road. I'm giving you the most valuable thing I have: perspective. You have the chance to live a life of honor. To sleep through the night--
Merle Howard: You know what? I already have a father who sells me his bad choices, his object lessons. You have a day to resign gracefully. After that, I'm blasting the picture out wide.

Chuck Rhoades: Does the election-tampering bother you? Kate Sacker: Nah, I'd have a bigger problem if you weren't in it to win it. Chuck Rhoades: I was on the right side of history, if that matters. Kate Sacker: Yeah, no, not much. Kate Sacker: As you'd say... "Let me work."

Chuck Rhoades: Ah, the things we do for those we love huh?...

Rhoades, Sr.: If the worst comes to pass, Wendy... if I hit the fucking wall and become a full gomer, I need you to be clear-eyed and punch my ticket. Can I count on you?
Wendy Rhoades: Sure, Dad. If it comes to it, I'll put you down.
Rhoades, Sr.: That's a good girl.

Mike Prince: You're trying to put a read on me? Steady hands, no micro-expressions, nothing there. So you can look as long and hard as you want at my life, past or present. There's nothing there for you to chew on.
Bobby Axelrod: You sure? When a man's bluffing, he looks a guy right in the eyes.
Mike Prince: I look people in the eye because I believe in myself. And I like to connect with them.

Mike Prince: ...one of the things I love about the Danes, their warmth. They have the most delightful demeanor and a wonderful word to describe their state of cozy well-being. Hygge. It's the contentment of feeling warm, being warm. Danes are hygge-like. And in the time I will be spending in their midst, I plan to embrace their way of life. While you will remain here... Cold, lonely, self-obsessed, and most assuredly not hygge-like.

Bobby Axelrod: You'll always be my guy, Wags. But don't make me have to get another guy that you report to.

Chuck Rhoades: You know, I always figured I'd keep growing in a real way. That the worst parts of me would recede over time, that I'd be able to will myself forward to the better.
Ira: Oh, instead?
Chuck Rhoades: As 50 looms, you come to see that those sub-optimal parts, the bugs, as it were... They aren't bugs. No. Turns out, they are you.

Bobby Axelrod: This is a strange fucking pep talk, Wend.
Wendy Rhoades: Because I'm not giving you one. Do you know how many sports movies I've watched over the last 20 years? All of them. Wendy Rhoades: So believe me, I know how to do 'em.

Bobby Axelrod: So what do you suggest I do instead?
Wendy Rhoades: Figure out who or what from your past you're still furious at, because that's where it always really comes from, and go hit that. Or finally decide to let it go.
Bobby Axelrod: The past... You're right. It's always the fucking past.

Dean Walker: You did do a good thing. Two, really. Merle Howard has a chance to be a productive member of society. And Yale is now protected from a mentor like you.

Chuck Rhoades: Well, I no longer need it. But I am in the mood to take someone down. Let's do it because it's the right thing to do.
Kate Sacker: Refreshing.
Chuck Rhoades: Old school. Move fast on this.
Kate Sacker: You know it.

Taylor Mason: I'm on the wrong side of our generation. Even just the four years between when Axe put the choice to me, and now...
Rian: No, yeah, you're old. I'm not. But I'm not sitting here like I'm better than you. Fuck. You chose something sturdy and real, and where, like, you could land. I'm still floating. That's what I've been thinking about since we last talked. How I'm caught between.

Rian: I'm gonna ditch the catering company.
Taylor Mason: Good. But I can't let you just go and do it without warning you what else you need to be ready for. What else one gives up to go on the journey.
Rian: Oh, so what else do you give up?
Taylor Mason: Nights, weekends, holidays. Your world will become a series of data sets, line items on a P and L. Everything broken down into basis points. And your victories will not be the money, the thing that anybody can measure, but the stuff they can't begin to appreciate. Looking beyond what's quantifiable, the subtle refinements, the elegance of success.
Rian: I'll quit the catering company. Then buy it. Turn it over to my friends.
Taylor Mason: Nice gesture. They won't appreciate it. But at least you'll know you did a good thing for them. Your real friends, few as they may be, will get it. And the ones that don't, don't have the capacity to be the kind of friend you need.
Rian: So instead of friendship, you have to use work to fill the void?
Taylor Mason: I guess I do.

--
On the IMDb

The Limitless Sh*t

Billions 5×7

Kate Sacker: We know you must be eager to get started, and we have an exciting first assignment.
Chuck Rhoades: Now, when it comes to the office of the Attorney General, courage is a must. Courage to aim for the highest targets without flinching. To brush away the dust from the reticles on your scopes and take dead aim at even the loftiest of our government... So today, you're gonna go after a cabinet member...

Kate Sacker: Your task is to build legal cases and arguments against him.
Chuck Rhoades: Let's find his lost tapes, his stained blue dress, his perfect call.

Dollar Bill: That may sound like a joyous Kwanzaa celebration to you...
Everett: Kwanzaa was last...
Dollar Bill: Well, it ain't the sounds of a goddamned Chanukah festival of lights either. Or the motherfucking eve of motherfucking Christmas...
Tuk: I really don't think you want that phrase on the record, there are HR considera...
Dollar Bill: No. What that sound is, is a funeral dirge. And that funeral is ours.

Tuk: We're going to have to deregister as a hedge fund. This place will become a family office, to separate commerce from banking. No outside fees to cover our salaries. Redundancies will become clear. To him. Some of us will be Midsommar'd.
Mafee: Yes! Exactly!
Dollar Bill: I don't actually know what that means, but it sounds...
Tuk: Horrible. Utterly horrible.

Ben Kim: When we do get the bank charter, how much are our lives changing? Will our jobs...
Bobby Axelrod: No, it's not a problem.
Ben Kim: It's not?
Bobby Axelrod: Well, it's not my problem. And don't ask another guy about your future. Make your own fucking future.
Ben Kim: It's like my own mother took the form of your body. I can almost taste her ggori gomtang. It's chilling...

Victor Mateo: Vigilantrix.
Bobby Axelrod: I read about the trials. That's the thing, huh?
Victor Mateo: It sure is. It's the Limitless shit.

Bobby Axelrod: Victor!... Purely optional. But for those of you who are ready to cross the threshold and become a version of himself with the energy of a 17-year-old, the focus of a 30-year-old and the wisdom of a 100-year-old, step the fuck up.

---

Chuck Rhoades: If we can't take him out, we have to make him take himself out.
Kate Sacker: The old B3 bomber trick?
Chuck Rhoades: The last great Mamet. And yes. That's exactly it.

Todd Krakow: I'm not going down with the ship, God damn it! You hear me? Because there is coronavirus on it, and that shit spreads. And what the fuck happened to trust, huh?

Todd Krakow: I won't be a part of a criminal enterprise... I will not be a part of a criminal enterprise! I will not be a part of a goddamn criminal enterprise!

Taylor Mason: Give me a sample of what you said.
Rian: Yo quiero chilaquiles verdes en la biblioteca despacito, con un lado arroz.
Taylor Mason: Got it. Yep. What's that Tom Cruise says in "A Few Good Men"? Yeah. Clear. Crystal.

Taylor Mason: This drug is warping your judgment. This isn't the Limitless shit. It's the Scarface shit.

Bobby Axelrod: Absolutely incorruptible... Unless you're a socialite with a nine-figure bank account with a sweet tooth for abstract art. ... That went about as expected.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': The admixture of art and commerce, almost as intoxicating as whiskey and water.
Bobby Axelrod: And almost twice as likely to cause bar fights.

Bobby Axelrod: Wags. You ready to become a wartime consiglieri once again?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': Pop had Genco. You have me.
Bobby Axelrod: You know why they called it going to the mattresses when mob families went to war?
Mike Wagner 'Wags': It's mentioned in 1 but never explained.
Bobby Axelrod: General idea. It's because you had to move out of your home and hole up someplace where no one could find you, with all your men. But you had to do it quick, so that you'd get the jump on the rival family before they got the jump on you. So you had places stashed around the city, with the mattresses on the floor. And that is where you would make your stand until you nailed the boss of the rival family. And once you got him and all his soldiers fell into line, that's when you'd go home to your comfy bed and your wife and kids.
Mike Wagner 'Wags': And that's what we're about to do?
Bobby Axelrod: We sure are.

--
On the IMDb
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The Nordic Model

Billions 5×6

Bobby Axelrod: You better have some fucking answers the next time I ask... because silence will not be acceptable then.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': Most dangerous thing in the world: government employees who don't hate their jobs enough to take a bribe.

Taylor Mason: We can provide you cash. But looking at you, I sense you need more than that.
Wendy Rhoades: You need... what is it, the thing you're not saying, the thing at the corner of your mind? That would bring you some ease. What will help you, the human being, be your best.
Taylor Mason: How can we be that for you right now?
Dev Satyal: No one's asked that.
Wendy Rhoades: Let us do more than feel your pain...

Chuck Rhoades: You know, I don't mind the pinch, but I don't like looking. Why is that?
Nurse: It represents your life force flowing out.

Rian: Microchip was simple; pasteurization too. Both changed the world. Not always about the degree of technical difficulty, sometimes it's about insight and initiative.

Rhoades, Sr.: Love only makes the weak blind.

Rhoades, Sr.: Of course you don't have my blood flowing in your veins. If you did, you'd be goddamned President by now. Or the fucking Pope.

Rhoades, Sr.: Your arteries must be filled with the same watery gruel as your mother's pinhead brother.
Chuck Rhoades: That's not okay to say about somebody with microcephaly. Or maybe anybody ever.
Rhoades, Sr.: Do you know they... they used to have a rating system for mental infirmity? We're all too polite for it now. But that list told it like it goddamned was. A cretin was without a thought in their head. An idiot had the intellect of a two-year-old child. An average imbecile got up to seven. And a moron could be as clever as a feeble-minded twelve-year-old. You pick your fucking title.
Chuck Rhoades: Good talk, Dad.... I'm sorry you're scared.

Danny Margolis: Is it too late to pay the taxes?
Bobby Axelrod: Oh, come on...
Danny Margolis: I'm just...
Bobby Axelrod: Goodness, what a question... Yes! Even if I were willing. Which I'm not.

---

Chuck Rhoades: ...you're about to teach me. On prostitution.
Catherine Brant: Sex work. Call it sex work, because that's what it is, work.
Chuck Rhoades: Uh-huh.
Catherine Brant: Prostitution suggests something criminal, immoral... deviant.
Chuck Rhoades: Why the hell isn't it deviant?

Catherine Brant: The Nordic Model is doing great things to decrease stigma, redistribute responsibility. Why should the workers be punished and not the patrons?
Chuck Rhoades: Yes, that's the stuff. Make your best argument... and then help me shred it.

Ari Spyros: Liquid courage, don't fail me now.

Wendy Rhoades: What kind of help are you looking for... emotional, personal...
Taylor Mason: The Axe kind. How would you load Axe up to deal with an existential threat?
Wendy Rhoades: I wouldn't need to. He registers all threats as existential. So I either try to stop him or at least point him away from civilians.

Taylor Mason: How can I approach this like Axe without becoming him?
Wendy Rhoades: Never known anyone to put on the suit without it changing them. But if anyone can, I suppose it's you... Model the will, the aggression... but temper it with your own fundamental advantage.
Taylor Mason: A moral compass?
Wendy Rhoades: The ability to accurately weigh reward vs. jail time. You know what you need now?

Maureen Ryder: I may have misjudged you. Thought you had a limit on how you use your power.
Chuck Rhoades: No. When it comes to the particular agenda I am pursuing, I will do it Rudy Giuliani-style. I will prosecute with a crazy eye and absolutely no sense of boundaries.

Mafee: I am never doing another nice thing.
Ben Kim: I say that every day. But we are who we are.

Rhoades, Sr.: Second worst thing about dialysis, after the bedpans? Turns everyone into agoddamned Hallmark card.

Rhoades, Sr.: One thing I know about the Greeks, the great tragedies rarely featured death scenes. Plain left that shit offstage. They just did not find it interesting. Living... that's the real drama. The real classroom. Plenty of lessons left to teach.
Wendy Rhoades: You're worried about Willow.
Rhoades, Sr.: Good God no. .... But Chuck... if I'm not here to push him, to mold him, who knows all the ways he'll fuck himself up.

Todd Krakow: I'm ready for my close-up.

--
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Contract

Billions 5×5

Wendy Rhoades: We have to fire him.
Taylor Mason: "Have to" is a bit strong. We have to breathe. Have to find shelter. Food to eat. We don't have to fire Winston... "Should."
Wendy Rhoades: I can co-sign should. We should fire him.
Taylor Mason: Then we will.

Wendy Rhoades: Tell me he sees the Matrix and we're done here.
Taylor Mason: I can't tell you he sees the Matrix.
Winston: I saw the Matrix before they even made the fucking movie! And I was like five years old then.

Rian: Swick... That's a mashup of swag and slick.

Karl Allerd: Like I said: mushy.
Kate Sacker: Why are you so quiet?
Chuck Rhoades: Because I have an idea that I really shouldn't say out loud.

Bobby Axelrod: You familiar with 'contract,' Savion?
Savion: Yeah. Deal you sign.
Bobby Axelrod: Mm. That's a contract, not 'contract.' Contract is an understanding between men, that they see things the same way, that they'll keep code. That they'll honor the spirit of their relationship even in unforeseen circumstances. Like that, uh... The arrangement we had when we told the story... That should hold even if attempts were made to re-tell that story. Understand?
Savion: Word is bond.
Bobby Axelrod: Yeah. That's a good way to put it.
Savion: It's bullshit though.

Lauren Turner: How much did she ask for, how much did you offer?
Taylor Mason: Fifty. Ten. Like you suggested. Big gap.
Lauren Turner: It's a question of value... And loyalty.

Lauren Turner: I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions.
Taylor Mason: Is this like an online quiz or something?
Lauren Turner: No. And don't try to add 'em up, see what I'm getting at. Just answer one at a time. And then...
Taylor Mason: Ask away.
Lauren Turner: How smart is Wendy Rhoades?
Taylor Mason: General intelligence: top one percent. Person to person, with EQ included, top one half of one percent.
Lauren Turner: How good is Wendy Rhoades at gameplay?
Taylor Mason: In the important games, the ones not played on boards or fields: again, top one half of one percent.
Lauren Turner: Why do we like Wendy Rhoades?
Taylor Mason: Because: We do like her.
Lauren Turner: Is that real?

---

Nico Tanner: That's the way it goes in the end. Buildings. Relationships. Empires. We're always trying to hold onto what we think matters. We almost always get it wrong.

Chuck Rhoades: Dad, were you in pain and not telling us?
Rhoades, Sr.: You get fucking old... If I reported on every ache and pain, it'd be a daily bulletin.

Taylor Mason: ... I'm giving you 40. I need to be senior, but I need you fully invested and without doubt.
Lauren Turner: And are you? Without doubt?
Taylor Mason: There's uncertainty in almost everything that comes next. The essence of our job is to overcome that and take calculated risks.

Taylor Mason: Welcome back aboard.
Winston: I've been aboard, the whole damn time!
Wendy Rhoades: Be happy and don't be so fucking needy.
Winston: That's what my first girlfriend said. And my last one.

Mike Wagner 'Wags': While all the candidates were deeply flawed, I finally know the right one... Moi.
Bobby Axelrod: You're going full Dick Cheney? Wags, no one loves you more than me, but the rules say I need someone with prior banking experience...

Bobby Axelrod: Who got to you?... Someone's won you over somehow, got you to see the world the way they see it. Instead of the way it really is. Am I right?

Bobby Axelrod: Take a look around this place... Go on. Let your eyes drink it all in... All the people, your friends, the rest. And then forget about every single last one of 'em and move the fuck on.
Savion: ... Done.

Rian: Luck? There's probability, plausibility and actuality. Luck is superstition. Luck is lazy math.

Wendy Rhoades: You cleared it out pretty nicely. You gonna burn it to the ground?
Bobby Axelrod: I'd like to.
Wendy Rhoades: And the whole town with it, huh?
Bobby Axelrod: I can't give in to that kind of thinking. But...

--
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