The Departed Quotes

Tuesday, July 26 by Travis Petersen

"The Departed" is a classic gangster film, and due to many memorable The Departed quotes, it is also one of the most widely talked about in recent memory. With colorful characters using colorful language, The Departed quotes show the Irish mob and the cops who are after them at their vivid best. Here are some of the best and most quotable quotes from "The Departed."

  1. "You can learn a lot, watching things eat." This line comes from Frank Costello, the Irish mob kingpin played by the inimitable Jack Nicholson. It shows a lot about his character, not only his perceptiveness, but the fact that he says it after crushing a fly on the table in the Chinese restaurant where they're eating, then licks it off of his palm to follow it up. The Departed quotes come in many forms, but this is one of the simple best.
  2. "I am killing you." The Departed quotes often have double meanings, as with this one from Leonardo DiCaprio's Billy Costigan to Matt Damon's Colin Sullivan, who he's just found out and proven to be the mole in the police operation, after Colin begs for Billy just to kill him. Later on, Billy's actions will, indeed, kill Colin, just not in the way one expects from this moment in the film.
  3. "My theory on feds is that they're like mushrooms, feed 'em shit and keep 'em in the dark." The Departed quotes that are funniest and most profane often come from the mouth of Dignam, the cop played by Mark Wahlberg. This is merely one example of his profane Irish wisdom.
  4. "The only one that can do what I do is me. Lot of people had to die for me to be me. You wanna be me?" Our last entry, like many other The Departed quotes, has a double meaning. Spoken by Nicholson's Frank Costello to Leonardo DiCaprio, undercover in his organization, it alludes not only to the violence in the gangster's past, but also the betrayal and further violence that will follow. To see how the Departed quotes fit into the film as a whole, the dialogue giving the film its layers of meaning, one only needs to watch.