How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from The Sting.
Quote #1
DOYLE LONNEGAN: What am I supposed to do? Call him for cheating better than me?
When Lonnegan realizes that Henry Gondorff has cheated him in a card game, he also realizes there's nothing he can do about it. You see, Lonnegan has been cheating also and there's no way for him to call Gondorff out without revealing this fact.
Quote #2
HENRY GONDORFF: If you rattle his imagination a little, he'll come up with all the right answers himself. But all he's gotta do is catch you in one lie and you're dead.
This might as well be the first rule of lying to a dangerous person. For starters, dangerous people need to think that certain things are their own idea. So you need to give them just enough lies for them to make the decisions you want. Second, you need to be vague because if they catch you in even one little lie, they'll know something's wrong and they'll mess you up.
Quote #3
JOHNNY HOOKER: How many guys you conned in your life, Henry?
HENRY GONDORFF: Two or three hundred I guess. Sometimes played two a day when I was in Shea's mob. We had it down to a business.
Some of us might be surprised at how many people Henry has conned in his life. And some of us might immediately wonder how many of these people actually deserved to be conned like Mottolla in the opening scene of this movie. The truth is that for every bad person Henry has conned, there are probably a dozen who were ordinary, hard-working folks. And that might make us think twice about how much we admire Henry.