“Do you have any idea who you've been dealing with?""This is big-time! Interstate! Federal! You're not in a precinct, are you?""This goes way beyond you! This goes deep!""We've been on to this guy for a long time, Shaka.""The Virginia Mafia! Nobody fucks with them!""We've got him in a room down the hall--this guy gave up his own sister! You're lucky you got out alive!”

“There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.”

“On the second to last day, Lt. Russo, who ran the program, announced, "Unless you were at dinner last night and had the opportunity to say 'Howard, pass the salt,' you are going to Brooklyn North and Manhattan North. That's where they need people, and that's where you're going." "Howard" referred to to the Commissioner Safir, and when they read the list of assignments the next afternoon--"Alvarez... Brooklyn North...""Baker... Brooklyn North...""Buono... Manhattan North...""Calderon... Brooklyn North...""Conlon... South Bronx Initiative..."--more than a few people turned around to look. Howard, pass the salt. I was a little surprised myself.”

“Do you like being a cop?""I love it, when it doesn't suck, sir.”

“It wasn't as if crack was getting great press in the South Bronx in 1999, but it took a particular kind of idiot to wake up one day and say, 'Angel dust is a product I've heard nothing but good about, and it's about time I was involved.”

“What is the world coming to, when you can't trust a whore named Snake?”

“I had to agree with one ex-boyfriend of one crackhead complainant who'd gone missing, when he told me with disdain, 'This is a whole big bunch of unbelievable!”