When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.

Cliff: I never thought I'd see the a buddy of mine would be dating a woman with three bars on her shoulder.
Mickey: I think it's beyond what you'd call dating.
Cliff: You're gonna get married?
Mickey: Maybe.
Cliff: You met her family? Think her family's gonna be okay that you're a white guy?
Mickey: They think any woman over 30 who isn't married is a lesbian. She figures, they'll be so relieved that I'm a man...
Cliff: Yeah, it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.
Bartender: I'm as liberal as the next guy.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: If the next guy is a redneck.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: Well, I'm working on a few things. I'm going over to the other side.
Ray: Republicans?
Sheriff Sam Deeds: No, Mexico.
Wesley Birdsong: This stretch of road runs between nowhere and not much else.
Cody: To run a successful civilization, you have got to have your lines of demarcation: between right 'n' wrong, between this'n 'n' that'n. Your daddy understood that. He was uh what-you-call-it... the referee of this damn menudo we got down here. He understood how most folks don't want their salt and sugar in the same jar.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: Boy, you mix drinks as bad as you mix metaphors, you'd be out of a job.
[Wade lifts up a tortilla and finds a bribe underneath]
Sheriff Charlie Wade: This beaner fare doesn't agree with me, but the price sure is right.
Mikey: Let's see... I did two tours of duty in southeast Asia and I was married for five years. I couldn't tell you which experience was worse. I knew she was Japanese going in, but she didn't tell me about the Ninja assassin part.
Otis Payne: It's not like there's a line between the good people and the bad people. It is not like you're one or the other.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: He ever accept cash for a favor?
Otis Payne: I don't recall a prisoner ever died in your daddy's custody. I don't recall a man in this county - black, white, Mexican - who'd hesitate for a minute to call on Buddy Deeds to solve a problem. More than that, I wouldn't care to say.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: I suppose Hollis told you. We found Charlie Wade.
Otis Payne: Is that right? Start digging holes in this county, no telling what'll come up.
Young Hollis: [after shooting suspect in cold blood] You killed him!
Sheriff Charlie Wade: [laconically] Son, you got a talent for stating the obvious.
Pricilla Worth: Damn, they're closing down military left and right and putting up jails like 7-Eleven stores!
Mexican-American Mother: [about school textbooks] We're not changing anything, we're just trying to present a more complete picture.
Anglo Mother: And *that* has got to stop!
Otis Payne: Am I going to get to meet that family of yours?
Delmore Payne: Why would you want to do that?
Otis Payne: Because I'm your father.
Delmore Payne: You'll get official notification when I make my decision.
[Birdsong pulls out a huge rattlesnake skin]
Wesley Birdsong: Here... This big fella was sleeping in a crate at Cisco's junkyard. Right when I was gonna open to see what was in her. Jumped right at my face. Scared me so bad I had to kill him without thinking. Gotta be careful where you go pokin'. Who knows what you'll find.
Coworker: Your mother's family is Spanish?
Pilar Cruz: Sure, they go back to Cortez. When he rode by, they were squatting in a hut cooking hamsters for dinner.
Wesley Birdsong: Hell, at my age, you learn a new name you gotta forget an old one.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: You oughta put up a banner: "Frontera, Texas: gateway to inexpensive pussy."
[last lines]
Pilar Cruz: All that other stuff, all that history? To hell with it, right? Forget the Alamo.
[first lines]
Cliff: [cataloging the flora] We got cenizo, that's purple sage, agave, nopal... What's that stuff? Yeah that's it, that's whatchamacallit. That's horse crippler.
Mikey: This place is a gold mine.
Cliff: Lead mine.
Ben Wetzel: I remember Charlie Wade come to my father's hardware store once. I was just a little boy. And I'd heard stories about how he shot this'un and how he shot that'un. The man winked at me. I peed my pants. Just winked at me.
Pilar Cruz: I'm unmarried. I'm not available.
Coworker: You told me once it was true love.
Pilar Cruz: Nobody stays in love for twenty-three years.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: No telling yet if there's been a crime, but this country's seen a fair amount of disagreements over the years.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: If I met you for the first time today, I'd still want to be with you.
Mayor Hollis Pogue: Hey, look at all this will ya? Tackle, boat... All just to catch a little ol' fish minding his own business down at the bottom of the lake. Hardly seems worth the effort, does it, Sam?
[In the middle of nowhere]
Sheriff Sam Deeds: Great place for a business.
Wesley Birdsong: Do you see much competiton around?
Sheriff Sam Deeds: Mrs. Bledsoe?
Minnie Bledsoe: That's me.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: I'm Sheriff Deeds.
Minnie Bledsoe: Sheriff Deeds is dead, honey. You just Sheriff Junior.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: Yeah, that's the story of my life.
Fenton: Buddy Deeds said a thing, he damn well backed it up. Never be another one like him. You know, that boy of his can't cut it. You ask me, he's all hat and no cattle.
Pilar Cruz: All my mother does is work. That's how you get to be Spanish.
Ray: This ain't Houston, my friend. We're pretty much running things now. Our good day has come.
Shadow: You chumps ain't had a good day since the Alamo.
Mikey: Hey, Cliff!
Cliff: What'd you find? Pieces of eight? Relics from the Coronado expedition?
Mikey: Cliff, come here!
[Cliff comes over and sees a half-buried skeleton in the ground]
Cliff: Jesus...
[Mikey lifts a ring out of the ground]
Mikey: Was Coronado in the Masons?
Sheriff Charlie Wade: You're bein' mighty careless with your mouth, son.
Chucho Montoya: You're the sheriff of Rio County, right? Un jefe mui respectado.
[drawing a line in the sand]
Chucho Montoya: Step across this line. You're not the sheriff of nothing anymore, just some tejano with a lot of questions I don't have to answer. A bird flying south, you think he sees this line? Rattlesnake? Javelina? Whatever you got. You think halfway across that line they start thinking different? Why should a man?
Sheriff Sam Deeds: Your government's always been pretty happy to have that line, the question's just been where to draw it.
Chucho Montoya: My government can go fuck itself, and so can yours! I'm talking about people here. Men.
Danny: Look, I'm not after you, Sam. I just think people in town ought to know the full story on Buddy Deeds.
Sheriff Charlie Wade: That makes two of us.
Chet Payne: He's still pissed off because he didn't have a...
Otis Payne: Didn't have a father? When you're his age, you'll still be pissed off at *him*.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: I'm just a jailer. I run a 60 room hotel with bars on the windows.
Chet Payne: So I'm part Indian?
Otis Payne: By blood you are. But blood only means what you let it.
Mayor Hollis Pogue: Back in the 1960's, a reporter from a national magazine went to the governor of our Lone Star state, and asked, "Governor, what's your idea of what a real Texan ought to be?" And the governor said, "Son, that's easy. Just go down to Rio County and get a look at Sheriff Buddy Deeds."
[a black colonel talks to a black private busted for drug use]
Delmore Payne: With your attitude, Private, I'm surprised you want to stay in the service.
Athena Johnson: I do, sir.
Delmore Payne: Because it's a job?
Athena Johnson: Outside... it's... it's such a mess. Um... It's...
Delmore Payne: Chaos. Why do you think they let us in on the deal?
Athena Johnson: 'Cause they got people to fight - Arabs, yellow people, whatever. Might as well use us?
Delmore Payne: It works like this, Private. Every soldier in a war doesn't have to believe in what he's fighting for. Most of them fight just to back up the other soldiers in their squad. They try not to get them killed, they try not to get them extra duty, they try not to embarrass themselves in front of them. Why don't you start with that?
Mayor Hollis Pogue: Word gets out, and people are gonna think Buddy done it.
Sheriff Sam Deeds: Buddy's a god damned legend, he can handle it.