Live by Night Monologues

A group of Boston-bred gangsters set up shop in balmy Florida during the Prohibition era, facing off against the competition and the Ku Klux Klan.

I don't wanna be a gangster. Stopped kissing rings a long time ago.

Maybe it's true. We all find ourselves in lives we didn't expect. But what I learned was powerful men don't have to be cruel. I got one guaranteed life, I was gonna live it. I had a plan. Do you think that we got where we are by lettin' some inbreds muscle us?

So you're threatening me with people that are more powerful than you?

You don't think I'm strong enough?

Powerful men don't have to be cruel.

More booze has been drunk in the last ten years than ever before. Because people don't wanna be told that they can't do it.

On Saturdays I take my son to the shows.

Some little German guy is making trouble overseas. I don't believe they will fight another war though. No percentage in it… My son loved the show. It was about an honest sheriff in a dirty town. All he could talk about was getting his own badge when he grew up.

That's my brother. That was my brother's name. That's your uncle.

In the afternoon we fish for red-fins. One day my son asked me "Where is heaven in the sky?"I told him what Loretta told to me. "This is heaven, right here. We are in it now."

In 1917, I signed up to fight the Huns in France. Good men died all around me, and I saw no reason for it. The rules we lived by were lies. And they didn't apply to those who made them. I swore If I made it home, I would never follow orders again. I left a soldier, I came home an outlaw.

I realized it's not enough to break the rules. You have to be strong enough to make your own.