Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003 Video Game)

James McCaffrey: Max Payne

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Quotes 

• Max Payne : [narrating]  The past is a puzzle, like a broken mirror. As you piece it together, you cut yourself, your image keeps shifting. And you change with it. It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Vlad was right. There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?' when you look back, see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  All this time, we got the fable of sleeping beauty wrong. The prince didn't kiss her to wake her up. No one who's slept for a hundred years is likely to wake up. It was the other way around. He kisses her to wake himself up from the nightmare that has brought him there.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  'The things that I want' by Max Payne. A smoke. A whiskey. For the sun to shine. I want to sleep, to forget. To change the past. My wife and baby girl back. Unlimited ammo and a license to kill. Right then, more than anything, I wanted her.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Death is inevitable. Our fear of it makes us play safe, blocks out emotion. It's a losing game, without passion you are already dead.

• [last lines] 

  Max Payne : [narrating]  I had a dream of my wife. She was dead. But it was all right.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  The genius of the hole: no matter how long you spend climbing out, you can still fall back down in an instant.

• Vladimir Lem : I hate to do this, but you know how you are, you would never let it go.

  Max Payne : [narrating]  Einstein was right. Time is relative to the observer. When you're looking down the barrel of a gun time slows down, your whole life flashes by, heartbreak and scars. Stay with it, and you can live a lifetime in that split second.

  Vladimir Lem : Besides, a gentleman always avenges the insults done to his lady. You did kill Winterson.

  [shoots Max in the head] 

• Max Payne : [narrating]  When entertainment turns into a surreal reflection of your life, you're a lucky man if you can laugh at the joke. Luck and I weren't on speaking terms. Or maybe the place was just too lame to be funny.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Your past has a way of sneaking up on you. You'll hear broken echoes of it everywhere, like a bad replay. You'll get mad at everyone for reminding you about it, even if it's all in your head.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  We are willing to suffer, to die for the things we care about. For love, for the right choices. Because of her, I had solved the case. My case, all of it. Who I am.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  The trouble with wanting something is the fear of losing it, or never getting it. The thought makes you weak.

• Max Payne : [in the manor of Alfred Woden, after Max and Mona dealed with some men together]  Mona, wait. Stop. This is love.

  Max Payne : [Mona hits Max's head with her gun]  When someone drags you from the wreckage when you have given in, ready to just lie there and die.

  Mona Sax : [pointing her pistol to Max]  I told you not to come here. It's my job to clear up this mess and you're a part of it. Throw away your guns.

  Max Payne : [Max throws his guns away]  This is love. When someone, no matter what the cost, shows you there is hope, a choice, that you can put down your gun.

  Mona Sax : [after a while pulls back her pistol]  See? I can't do it.

  Mona Sax : [dropping her pistol]  You're a bastard, Max.

  Max Payne : [Vlad appears at the back of Mona]  This is love. Love Hurts.

  [Vlad shoots Mona at her back] 

• Max Payne : [narrating]  The past is a gaping hole. You try to run from it, but the more you run, the deeper, more terrible it grows behind you, its edges yawning at your heels. Your only chance is to turn around and face it. But it's like looking down into the grave of your love. Or kissing the mouth of a gun, a bullet trembling in its dark nest, ready to blow your head off.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Without Mona's help, I'd be a dead man. Suddenly, for the first time in I don't know how long, I realized, I didn't wish to be dead.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  I lied to myself that it was over. I was still alive. My loved ones were still dead. It wasn't over.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  There are things in life you cannot choose. How you feel.

• Max Payne : What about Mona Sax?

  Vladimir Lem : I know of her, her reputation as a hired killer. I hear she is a stone fox. I would fuck her.

  Max Payne : [narrating]  Right then, I hated Vlad.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  One last thing left to do. I was compelled to give Vlad his gun back... one bullet at a time.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  I felt the rise of that old familiar feeling... I hated it... I welcomed it...

• Max Payne : [narrating]  As surely as the bullet rips through the victim's flesh, organ and bone, it shatters the image of the man who presses the trigger.

• Female Sales Voice : Thank you for calling Dangerous Liaisons. For Candy, press one. For Sandy, press two. For Mona, press three.

  Female Sales Voice : You pressed three for Mona.

  Hooker : Hi, this is Mona. What's your name?

  Max Payne : I just need someone to talk to.

  Hooker : Honey, this is a phone sex line; all we do is talk.

  Max Payne : Right. It's... how do you fix something like that? How do you make amends? I thought it would help, but it only made it worse.

  Hooker : Just give me your credit card number and I can listen to you all night.

  Max Payne : Killing them all only made it worse; it didn't bring them back.

  Hooker : Hey! What are you, some kind of a weirdo?

  Max Payne : Sorry... this was... sorry.

  [Hangs up] 

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Like all the bad things in my life, it started with the death of a woman. I couldn't save her.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Firing a gun is a binary choice. You either pull the trigger or you don't...

• Max Payne : [narrating]  If you think nothing can get to you, you're lying to yourself. At best, you're temporarily dead. A lightning bolt can reanimate you without a warning.

• Max Payne : With no way to deal with the past, I kept my eyes on the road, off the rear view mirror and the roadkill behind me. I chased lesser mysteries, other people's crimes.

• Max Payne : [walking in room filled with bodies]  Like always, the dead had all the answers I was missing. It wasn't that they weren't eager to talk. Quite the contrary. The dead had plenty to say. And once they started, they would never shut up. Their words would keep you awake at night. The bodies, all the evidence of all the murders the cleaners had done, all the answers. It would take days to dig through it.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  There was a blind spot in my head, a bullet-shaped hole where the answers should be. Call it denial. I wanted to dig inside my skull and scrape out the pain.

• Vinnie Gognitti : Payne, you gotta help me! There's a freaking bomb in here. If I take the head off, if blows. Bye bye Vinnie. You're a freaking cop, you've gotta help me.

  Max Payne : [Max grabs his head]  How did this happen?

  Vinnie Gognitti : The russian tricked me.

  Max Payne : Join the club.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  A funhouse is a linear sequence of scares. Take it or leave it is the only choice given. Makes you think about free will: have our choices been made for us because of who we are?

• Max Payne : [narrating while jumping out of a window]  Throw the rules out the window, odds are you'll go that way too.

• Max Payne : [following Mona to her address]  Why I was there again? Wait! Wait just a minute. Talk to me!

  Mona Sax : What are you so afraid of? What do you want from me?

  Max Payne : [coming closer to Mona]  'The things that I want' by Max Payne

  Max Payne : A smoke. A Whiskey. For the sun to shine.

  Max Payne : [starting a passionate kissing session]  I want to sleep, to forget. To change the past. My wife and baby girl back

  Max Payne : Unlimited ammo and a licence to kill. Right then, more than anything, I wanted her.

  Mona Sax : [after they broke up with noises of some guns and men]  You led them here. Up to my place! We can take them there.

• Max Payne : Mona?

  Mona Sax : Max, we've gotta stop meeting like this.

• [Max is given the choice to escape from his situation] 

  Max Payne : [narrating]  I didn't deserve to walk away. There are no happy endings.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  She came to get me through the fire.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Winterson would've found a way to do this nice, neat and clean. Logic told me backup should be on its way; someone must've heard the gunfire. Logic was such a liar.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  Vinnie was about to piss his pants, he'd end up short circuiting the bomb and blowing us both up...

• [Max goes to meet Mona at her hideout but just as he gets there he sees that she is taking a shower] 

  Max Payne : You've switched tactics. We need to talk.

  Mona Sax : Bring me a towel, will you.

  [Max gives Mona a towel and she puts in on] 

  Mona Sax : Now that you are here, you can watch my back while I get dressed.

  Max Payne : All she had told me is that someone wanted us dead. The way she was acting, I was the only one in danger here.

• Mona Sax : There's a contract out on us.

  Max Payne : There's no "us" in this.

• Max Payne : [after founding lots of dead body in a building]  Mona, I know this sounds crazy, but I need you to go and call the cops. I need them here.

  Mona Sax : You're right. You are crazy. I'm a fugitive, Max. I just escaped from custody.

  Max Payne : I wouldn't ask if...

  Mona Sax : Go to hell, Max.

  Max Payne : Mona? Damn.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  If Mona couldn't make it to the other side of the yard, I wouldn't make it out of there alive. It was that simple.

• Max Payne : [narrating]  By talking of fate, Vlad had been asking for my blessing to his plan to murder me. I had been keeping to the back beat, reacting to Vlad's moves, cleaning up after him.

  [Max enters Vlad's resturant carrying a shotgun] 

  Max Payne : No more.

• Max Payne : Vlad, shut up and stay alive. I'm coming.

  Vladimir Lem : Max! You heard him. He's coming for you!

• Mike 'The Cowboy' : Hey, you Max Payne?

  Max Payne : Afraid so...

  Mike 'The Cowboy' : Max! I'm Mike, Vladimir's friend! You are the sheriff, how about making me your deputy?

  Max Payne : Let's go bail out your boss before he talks us all to death.

  Mike 'The Cowboy' : Let's ride!