The Sting Friendship Quotes

Of course, Snyder's use of the word "friend" here is totally menacing. What he really means here is, "Give me all your money or I'll turn you over to the mob." And seriously, who wants friends if this is what counts as one?

In this movie, you'll hear a lot of characters use the word "friend" as a general term for "hey you" or "buddy." In this case, Henry Gondorff uses the word to remind Johnny that even though he's a good grifter, there's still a ton of stuff he doesn't know and Henry does.

Doyle Lonnegan feels loyalty toward the men he knew as a child. But he has a much deeper loyalty to all the money and power he's spent his life trying to get. That's why he can never let his mob buddies find out about Johnny Hooker taking his money, or else he'll have no choice but to kill everyone who might sense weakness in him.

When he shakes down Joe Erie for information about Johnny, Snyder is quickly frustrated by the loyalty that grifters tend to have toward one another. In this case, he busts up Joe's nose pretty badly, but doesn't really get anything out of him. That's because Joe is a good friend.

Joe Erie isn't really interested in the money he'll make off of conning Doyle Lonnegan. But like Johnny, he was a friend of Luther Coleman and he wants revenge for the death of his friend. It's this loyalty that ends up impressing Kid Twist enough to let Joe in on the con.

When Henry finds out that Johnny is withholding important info from the rest of his grifter gang, Henry calls him out on being a bad friend. In Henry's mind, Johnny is a little too selfish at times and unwilling to admit when he needs help. But luckily, this is a lesson Johnny will learn one way or the other.

You can tell a lot about people in this movie by how they use the word "friend." Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker, for example, tend to use the word when they're actually feeling friendly with people. But villains like Snyder and Lonnegan tend to use this word when they're actually trying to intimidate someone. So yeah, those aren't the guys you want to be friends with.

In the opening scene of the movie, Mottolla thinks he's doing a great job of conning Luther by taking his money and promising to take it to the mob. But his friendship is totally a lie and he plans on selling Luther out entirely. So in a sense, the dude deserves to get conned the way he does by Johnny and Luther. As for the knife he ends up getting in his eye from Lonnegan, we're going to go ahead and say that's a bit excessive.

Hooker feels a close friendship with Luther because, in his words, Luther is the guy who's responsible for getting him into a higher class of grifting. But Johnny isn't here to talk about Luther's skills. He's here to tell us why he feels so loyal to his old friend. And that's why he needs to take down Lonnegan to avenge Luther's death in the only way he knows how—by conning.

At the end of the movie, Johnny is shocked when a strange gunman puts a bullet in the head of Loretta, the waitress Johnny has just slept with. But as we find out in the ensuing conversation, the gunman has been hired by Henry Gondorff to take care of Johnny. Henry, you see, knows that Johnny has been too proud to admit the trouble he's in. So Henry took the initiative and hired a guy to look after Johnny without his knowing. Now that's friendship. (Cue the sentimental music.)