Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 13

Alex:
All I ever heard about was how Mike Cutter was a crusader for Justice. What happened to you?

Cutter:
If we press a case that we can't win, we just tell the next victim that she's better off staying silent.

Alex:
If we let DiStasio walk, we send a message to the rest of the world, that in New York, the law doesn't apply to the rich and the powerful. We are here to even those scales - not cut and run.

[Benson arrives in the captain's office]

Captain Cragen:
Elliot put his papers in. There was nothing I could do.

Benson:
He's earned it.

Captain Cragen:
And then some. You wanna talk?

Benson:
No.

Captain Cragen:
Wanna take a day?

Benson:
I'm fine.

Captain Cragen:
Liv, I'm sorry.

[Benson leaves the office]

[Fin and Rollins approach an apartment]

Rollins:
Apartment 1A. Arnold Savatsky. A level-2 offender.

[Fin knocks on the door]

Fin:
Trick or treatǃ

Arnold:
[behind door] I'm not supposed to open the doorǃ

Fin:
[knocks again] Policeǃ

Rollins:
Bein' a good boy.

[Arnold opens the door]

Rollins:
Happy Halloween, Arnold. You plannin' on handin' out any candy today?

Arnold:
Come on. Every year the same thing? I know the drill. Stay inside, no costumes, no kids.

Rollins:
That's right, Arnold.

Fin:
See you next year.

Rollins:
[knocks on another apartment door] Trick or treatǃ

Man behind door:
Who wants a treat?ǃ

[the door opens, revealing a clown with candy on hand]

Fin:
NYPD. What the hell you doin', Bozo? [the clown tries to shut the door, but Rollins stops him; Fin grabs the clown] Didn't your parole officer tell you not to open up the door on Halloween?ǃ

Amaro:
You think I want to talk to him? I want to tear his head off.

Benson:
My old partner, he, uh... There were a few times he came pretty close.

Gia:
[about her rapist] In the real world, he's sane and I'm not.

Gia:
Some girls travel or go to college to get away. Me, I vacation at La Guardia Psychiatric Hospital.

Captain Cragen:
Folks, this is Detective Second Grade Nick Amaro. He just transferred in.

Rollins:
Second grade already, huh? You must have caught some pretty big fish.

Amaro:
Nah, just kissed a lotta ass.

Supreme:
[to Fin] Hey man, you got your 20 years yet? Once you put your papers in, why don't you come work for me? I take real good care of my soldiers.

Benson:
No job for me, Supreme?

Supreme:
[grins] I don't know, sweetheart. Can you dance?

Benson:
There's no florist-client privilege.

Kathleen:
My husband is a diplomat. He wants everyone to like him. I don't. If you use this girl's lies to hurt my son, you are going down hard.

Munch:
Somebody please take over for me - I'm gonna go chew some glass.

Munch:
[to Amaro] Back when I got my shield, all we had to go on was blood type and fingerprints. We went with our gut. You know what, kid? I miss those days.

Munch:
Counselor Ellis.

Ellis:
Have we met?

Munch:
Sergeant John Munch. I admire your second act.

Ellis:
Um, I'm not sure I get the joke.

Munch:
I'm not joking. You can be NYPD and still believe in "innocent until proven guilty".

Ellis:
Well, I'm about to put that to the test.

Benson:
You proud of yourself? You brought up every stereotype, you shamed that girl about her sexuality, you said that if a white girl in that neighborhood cries rape, she must have wanted it. Nice work.

Ellis:
And your case? The ID, the gun your partner "heard" slide under the couch? No DNA? If Michael were white, this never would have gone to trial.

Benson:
Oh, wow. You're still playing the race card, huh?

Ellis:
84 percent of the young men in jail are black and Latino.

Benson:
He raped her!

Ellis:
So she says. We don't know. Neither one of us was there. The only thing we can do is believe our people. And we do it, without question.

Benson:
So that's it. You're a true believer.

Ellis:
I am, and so are you.

[Cragen is going undercover]

Amaro:
Now, I did a lot of undercover work when I was in Narcotics. I know Fin did, too. The key to undercover work...

Capt. Cragen:
... is to choose an identity as close to your own as possible. I know the drill, detectives.

Amaro:
Right. Sorry, Captain, I just didn't know they had, y'know, tape recorders when you graduated the Academy.

Fin:
At least we didn't have to inflate his bank account because he hasn't spent a dollar of his captain's pay on his wardrobe.

Captain Cragen:
Thank you very much for your help, fellas, but I gotta prepare for my "cyber-date".

Fin:
Knock it out, killa.

Captain Cragen:
I heard that.

Irina:
[to Cragen] You worry about children, you worry about your staff; who worries about you?

Benson:
Gia, George Zane is going to prison. He will never touch you again.

Gia:
You can't promise me that. In the real world, he's sane and I'm not.

Alex:
You want a deal? Your client tells us what we wanna know, and he does time.

Cutter:
And how much is up to you.

Exley:
What? The Ledger would love nothing more than to have a test case involving First Amendment and NYPD. Please, go ahead. Try us.

Captain Cragen:
You three are playing this while there's a missing kid out there?

Cutter:
Yeah, let's cut to the chase, Mr. Exley.

Exley:
Okay. Griscomb gives you everything he has on the missing boy's phone records, he gets full immunity from prosecution.

Cutter:
No, this is how it works: Wiretapping is federal. It's out of our hands. He give us something we can use, we'll mis-D the felony eavesdropping. Take a minute to think about it. And by a minute, I mean 59 seconds.

[Rollins moves on a suspect without telling Amaro]

Amaro:
How 'bout a heads up?

Rollins:
How 'bout you keep up?

Stanton:
I didn't know it was a ladies' room.

Amaro:
You were aware there was a woman in there.

Stanton:
Well yeah, but I wasn't paying any attention to that. It was so dark in there I could hardly see anything. I told you all that when you arrested me.

Amaro:
Me? You mean Detective Tutuola?

Stanton:
Yeah, all you guys look a lot alike.

Ellis:
[about Stanton] I'd ask that he be released of his own recognizance, but I'm not sure he'd be able to find his way home.

Rollins:
Can I ask you something? How long have you been at SVU?

Benson:
Don't ask.

Rollins:
I mean, how do you handle dating with the things you see day in and day out? How can you trust any man?

Benson:
I trusted my partner.

Rollins:
Yeah, well...

Benson:
I haven't given up. There are good guys still out there.

Holly:
Do you know what I had to do to get that audition? Down on my knees with that pig, and Crane, and all those guys? I'm so tired of being the ugly duckling, and just once, I wanted you to know what it felt like to feel dirty, to want to give up!

Megan:
I thought you were my friend! You had someone rape me!

Holly:
It's about time something bad happened in your life, don't you think?

Rand:
Just ask yourself something, counselor: Is this the battle you want? Because war is my business. And business is good.

Amaro:
Look, I have a daughter myself, Mr. O'Keefe. I understand how you feel.

O'Keefe:
Really. Does your daughter flinch when you try to hug her? Does your daughter wake up screaming in the night? Was your daughter raped so brutally that she'll never be able to have children?

Amaro:
We're gonna get these guys.

O'Keefe:
Prove it.

Amaro:
[finding a bottle of pills in Sandow's desk] Erection meds.

Munch:
Maybe he needed help with his "artistic process".

[Eddie tries to commit suicide by cop after finding out his father is a rapist]

Benson:
Eddie, don't!

Eddie:
Why do you care?

Benson:
Because I know what you're feeling.

Eddie:
No, you don't!

Benson:
Yes, I do. My father did terrible things to women, to my own mother. You have a choice. I'm nothing like my father. You don't have to be like yours.

[Rollins has admitted to being a gambling addict]

Captain Cragen:
I've been exactly where you are, I know how this job can weigh on you.

Rollins:
What do you mean?

Captain Cragen:
I used to drink. And I mean drink. Soon as I got off duty, I was at the bar pounding. And then I started having a few on the job. You know, just to get through. I thought nobody noticed. Now, my captain could've canned my ass. Should've. But he got me help instead.

Rollins:
Wow.

Captain Cragen:
You're a good detective, Amanda. I don't want to end your career.

Rollins:
I don't want that, either.

Captain Cragen:
So I'm gonna get you help. But you screw up again, you're gone.

Captain Cragen:
What've you got?

Amaro:
It's the lab report on the tissue samples from Sidney Eckhouse's autopsy. Father and daughter tested positive for the same strain of herpes.

Captain Cragen:
Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Benson:
Bastard likes to hunt? Let's see how he likes being in the crosshairs.

Fin:
[about Winger] He nurses birds back to health, and he kills women.

Captain Cragen:
[about Benson's half-brother Simon] Anything you wanna tell me?

Benson:
It's... complicated. I have a niece.

Captain Cragen:
Congratulations. What does he want from you? Liv, the last time your brother showed up, he nearly cost you your shield.

Benson:
Captain, he was being framed!

Captain Cragen:
And now, what does he want?

Benson:
He's the only family I have.

Captain Cragen:
And believe me, he knows it. You watch your step.

Rollins:
Somebody's gonna remember an incident from 3 and a half years ago? What are the odds on that? [Fin gives her a worried look] Easy. It's just an expression.

Fin:
My rope man in CSU got something.

Rollins:
You have a rope man?

Fin:
Yeah. [pause] Maybe I've been at this job too long.

Benson:
You're not a waste of time, you're a waste of a life.

Rollins:
Hey, so that no-name cell Christine called? I ran down the other incomings. It's a bunch of Wall Street guys ordering "deliveries" from the health food store.

Fin:
Yeah? Let's go find out what kind of "protein powder" they're talkin' about.

Novak:
The thing that scares me about cases like this is there's always another shoe.

...

Exley:
You know why I love cases like this? There's always another shoe.

Amaro:
We're pulling video, checking licenses, doing stop and frisks on white males...

Fin:
That's a nice change of pace.

[Amaro and Maria have an argument in front of the squad; they storm off]

Munch:
That right there is why I stopped marrying Italian women.

Benson:
How's the new assignment?

Dr. Huang:
A single, gay, Chinese-American man living in Oklahoma who's opposed to the death penalty... it's heaven.

Albert:
[about Barnes] He's got a hundred kids out there, and he never thought for one second what it was like for them growing up with a hole in their lives. In pain. Fatherless.

Amaro:
So you became that father. Posed as Donor 141, arranged to meet the girls...

Albert:
I just wanted to give them a father's love.

Munch:
Brenzino, Talon, and Talopi. Are those fish, or is that a law firm?

[Ken's fiancee, Alejandro, has been brutally beaten in a gay-bashing]

Fin:
How's he holding up?

Ken:
I don't know. I can't go in.

Fin:
What?!

Ken:
When Alejandro went into surgery, I thought I should call his father. When he saw me holding Alejandro's hand, he flipped out, said he was the next of kin, and had me thrown out of the room.

Fin:
Where is he?

Ken:
Dad...

Fin:
He's a father, I'm a father; let me talk to him. Ken, for once let me do something for you. I got this.

Dr. Warner:
Tattoos used to be subversive. Now, kindergarten teachers have them, which means the fringe has to go even further. I've seen stretched earlobes, forked tongues, plates under the skin. Amputation is the next frontier.

Attorney:
If my client is outed, it could seriously damage his practice.

Benson:
Not as much as a murder charge.

Party guest:
[to Rollins] You ever use your handcuffs in bed?

Rollins:
You ever get laid without paying for it?

Exley:
You people just don't see the big picture, do you?

Captainh Cragen:
Which is what?

Exley:
Delia Wilson has evaded arrest for 10 years. Why do you think that is? Because she's got the goods on everyone you work for and everyone you could ever consider working for. You have no idea how deep this goes.

Benson:
We'll do our job, you do yours.

Exley:
What, you and your DA friend Haden? You're in way over your head, sweetheart. I usually get top dollar for my legal advice, but here's some for free - walk away, little people.

Amaro:
Watch yourself, counselor.

Exley:
And you. You think your marriage is rocky now, kiddo? Wait 'til your wife finds out about you and your star witness.