How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from The Sting.
Quote #1
HENRY GONDORFF: Yeh, kid, it really stunk. No sense in bein' a grifter if it's the same as bein' a citizen.
Henry Gondorff had chosen the life of a criminal specifically because it's different from the life of an ordinary citizen. That's why he is so down on conmen who are so organized that they run their operations like regular businesses. For Henry, there's no thrill in conning if you can't be an exciting criminal.
Quote #2
POLK: I spent a lotta time in dumps like this, eatin' Gondorff's dust while the bunco squad gets rich tippin' him off. But it's not gonna happen this time. We're not even gonna let the police know we're here.
Polk (a.k.a. Hickey) knows full well that a lot of local cops are just as criminal as the conmen they're trying to catch. And he knows for a fact that Lt. Snyder is one of these cops, which is why he puts him on the spot when he talks about cops working directly with conmen in exchange for a cut of their profits.
Quote #3
JOHNNY HOOKER: That stuff I gave him was counterfeit. They'll pinch him the first place he tries to spend it.
Hooker is a professional criminal who isn't afraid of the law at all. After all, how else do we explain the fact that he will casually pass a thousand dollars in counterfeit bills to a working cop?
Quote #4
SNYDER: I'm lookin' for a guy on the lam from a counterfeiting rap. Thought he mighta come in here.
Snyder knows the kinds of places where Hooker and his criminal buddies like to hang out, which is why he checks on all the burlesque houses and brothels all over town. The funny thing is that Snyder only knows this because he's a criminal too…and he wants to shake down other criminals for money.
Quote #5
NILES: The porters say he runs a braced card game in one of the cars. $100 minimum, straight poker. Last time he pulled in here ten grand heavier than he left New York.
When the grifters are researching Doyle Lonnegan, one of the first things they do is research all the ways that Lonnegan is a criminal. Once they know this info, they can use it to box Lonnegan into some difficult situations, as we find out in the final scene of the movie.
Quote #6
JOHNNY HOOKER: It's foolproof. We got a partner downtown runs the central office of the Western Union. Race results from all over the country come in there and go right across his desk on their way to the bookies. All he does in hold them up a couple minutes until he can call us and get a bet down on the winner.
One of the best ways to run a con is to let the target know up front that you're a criminal. However, the trick is to convince him that you're a different kind of criminal than you actually are. That's exactly what Hooker does when he passes himself off as a cheating gambler to Doyle Lonnegan.
Quote #7
JOHNNY HOOKER: I gotta talk to my partner first. We can't afford to expose our game too much.
Johnny is pretty slick about how he cons Lonnegan. For starters, he convinces Lonnegan that he (Hooker) wants to take down Henry Gondorff with a big con. But second, he makes Lonnegan think that he (Lonnegan) is the actual person in control by letting him in on his apparent con.
Quote #8
LUTHER COLMAN: I gotta! Look, I run some slots down in West Bend for a mob here. I got a little behind on my payoffs so they figure I been holdin' out on 'em.
Once again, the best way to con someone is to let them know right away that you're a criminal. The important part is letting them think they have power over you because they already know you're a criminal. But this is the exact hook that makes them so easy to lie to once they've bought the first lie.
Quote #9
GRANGER: We had a few problems with the Law this morning. The Mayor promised the Jaycees to get tough on the rackets again, so he shut everybody down for a couple hours to make it look good.
The opening scene of this movie does a good job of telling us that we're going to be dealing with criminals for the next two hours or so. It's just going to be a matter of which criminals we like more than others. Plus we're also told in this scene that the police and the mayor more or less know that a lot of crime is going on, but they just make a gesture now and then and pretty much allow the stuff to keep happening.
Quote #10
POLK: There's word he's gonna run a con on the North Side here. We got a year-old Florida warrant on him, but it's a thin beef, and he can beat it in court unless we catch him cold.
When we first meet Polk, we assume he's an FBI agent trying to catch Gondorff. But that's just because we haven't learned our lesson yet, because nothing in this movie is what it seems to be. Polk is actually "Hickey," a conman friend of Henry Gondorff and the best part of his huge scheme.