How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from The Usual Suspects.
Quote #7
REDFOOT: The way I hear it, you did time with ol' Spook. Good man, wasn't he? I used to run dope for him. Too bad he got shivved
KEATON: Yeah. (Pause). I shivved him. Better you hear it from me now than from somebody else later.
REDFOOT: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. Just out of curiosity, was it business or personal?
KEATON: A bit of both.
This makes it sound like Keaton might've had his reasons for stabbing this guy—and maybe they weren't so bad. But since we learn at the end that Redfoot isn't real, we recognize that Verbal was just messing with Kujan—we don't know what Keaton was like, in a first-hand way.
We just get Verbal's distorted version.
Keaton remains a closed book to us at the end, when we see Verbal/Söze kill him in a flashback to the boat massacre. Was he a bad guy? Yeah, probably.
But we only ever encounter him as a character in Verbal's story—the Keaton we know is a fictional representation, though one possibly based on fact.
Quote #8
KOBAYASHI: One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.
This is true of all the criminals. Being criminals, they can't really trust each other and definitely can't trust people like Kobayashi and Söze. Even though they're working together, they are, on a fundamental level, alone.
Quote #9
VERBAL: They tell Söze they want his territory—all his business. Söze looks over the faces of his family... Then he showed these men of will what will really was... He tells them he would rather see his family dead than live another day after this.
Söze actually kills his own wife and remaining children, after his wife is raped and one of the children killed. He's so ruthless, so hardcore, that he wants to show his enemies that he can't be intimidated. His determination to act outstrips all human emotion. He then kills the families of these criminals and burns down their homes and businesses…