As she buttons up her clothes after the obviously unromantic and unexciting act, she casually dismisses the breaking of the sacred taboo (her under-aged deflowering by a 25 year-old), and downplays the importance of feeling passion and sexual attraction.In a memorable monologue to the bartender, Don describes the empowering benefits of booze:It shrinks my liver, doesn""t it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys.The vampire offers "very old wine" from a bottle and pours it into a glass for his guest.Renfield asks: "Aren""t you drinking?" Dracula replies with another well-remembered, mellifluous line that he never partakes:I never drink.She""s cuckoo in the head." Maria approaches and holds out tickets owards them, asking: "Buy a ticket in the lottery?...Just a dollar." Marcus withdraws hree dimes (thirty cents) from his pocket in his hand, but quickly replaces them, and then scolds Maria: "Go ""long with you! Lotteries is against the law!" She persists and persuades Trina to buy a lottery ticket: "-- the butcher in the next block won twenty dollars he last drawing!" Marcus picks his ear and nose, but Trina takes a dollar out of her handbag and purchases one of the tickets.It explores the psychological madness within an obsessed, wisted, inarticulate, lonely, anti-hero cab driver and war vet (De Niro), who misdirectedly lashes out with frustrated anger and power like an exploding time bomb at the world that has alienated him.