The Proposition (2005)

John Hurt: Jellon Lamb

Quotes 

• Jellon Lamb : Forgive me, sir, but I've been stuck here with no one but this sorry sack of Hibernian pig shit for conversation. Poor, poor Dan O'Reilly. Sit, sir. Drink with me.

  [Charlie cocks his gun and points it to Lamb] 

  Charlie Burns : One more crack about the Irish, Mr. Lamb, and I'll shoot you. Am I clear?

  Jellon Lamb : Oh, as the waters of Ennis, sir. Let us drink, then, to the Irish. No finer race of men have ever... peeled a potato.

  [Charlie cocks his gun again and points it to Lamb] 

  Charlie Burns : Do you pray, Mr. Lamb?

• Jellon Lamb : What is an Irishman but a nigger turned inside out?

• Jellon Lamb : [speaking about Arthur Burns]  "We are white men, Sir, not beasts. Oh, he sits up there in those melancholy hills; some say he sleeps in caves like a beast, slumbers deep like the Kraken. The Blacks say that he is a spirit. The Troopers will never catch him. Common force is meaningless, Mr. Murphy, as he squats up there on his impregnable perch. So I wait, Mr. Murphy. I wait.

  Charlie Burns : [Knocks Jellon out with a beer mug]  Aye, you wait. You wait here... bounty hunter.

• Charlie Burns : Do you pray, Mr. Lamb?

  Jellon Lamb : Good Lord, son, no, I do not. I was, in days gone by, a believer. But alas, I came to this beleaguered land, and the God in me just . . . evaporated. Let us change our toast, sir. To the God who has forgotten us.

• Jellon Lamb : [dying words]  There's night and day brother, both sweet things. Sun and Moon and stars, all sweet things. And quiet, there's a wind on the east. Life is very sweet, brother.

  Arthur Burns : Life is very sweet, brother, who would wish to die?

  Jellon Lamb : Ah.

  Arthur Burns : George Borrow, I believe. A worthy writer, and a beautiful sentiment sir. But you're not my brother.

  [finishes him off] 

• Jellon Lamb : Perhaps you've read "On the Origin of the Species By Means of Natural Selection" by Charles Darwin. Oh, don't be thrown by the title, he had some most fascinating things to say. Chilling things. Mr. Darwin spent time studying Aboriginals. He claims we are, at bottom, one in the same. He infers, Mr. Murphy, that we share a common ancestry with monkeys.

  [cackles] 

  Jellon Lamb : Monkeys!!!

• Jellon Lamb : Mr. Murphy, Russia, China, the Congo, oh, I have traveled among unknown people in lands beyond the seas. But nothing, *nothing* could have prepared me for this godforsaken hole.

• Jellon Lamb : By what name am I honored to address thee?