Sunset Blvd.

Betty Schaefer:
Don't you sometimes hate yourself?

Joe Gillis:
Constantly.

Joe Gillis:
You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.

Norma Desmond:
I *am* big. It's the *pictures* that got small.

Norma Desmond:
They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!

Joe Gillis:
I didn't know you were planning a comeback.

Norma Desmond:
I hate that word. It's a return, a return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the screen.

Max Von Mayerling:
She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn't know, you're too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later he strangled himself with it!

Norma Desmond:
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!

Joe Gillis:
Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.

Norma Desmond:
Don't be silly.

Norma Desmond:
Here, I was going to give it to you at midnight.

Joe Gillis:
Norma, I can't take it, you've bought me enough.

Norma Desmond:
Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars.

Joe Gillis:
Keep it.

Norma Desmond:
Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfiled, pumping, PUMPING, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!

Joe Gillis:
Cut out that "us" business!

Norma Desmond:
What's the matter with you?

Joe Gillis:
What right do you have to take me for granted?

Norma Desmond:
What right? Do you want me to tell you?

Joe Gillis:
Has it ever occurred to you that I may have a life of my own? That there may be some girl I'm crazy about?

Norma Desmond:
Who? Some car hop, or dress extra?

Joe Gillis:
What I'm trying to say is that I'm all wrong for you. You want a Valentino, somebody with polo ponies, a big shot!

Norma Desmond:
What you're trying to say is that you don't want me to love you. Say it. Say it!

Joe Gillis:
Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago.

Joe Gillis:
There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five.

Joe Gillis:
May I say that you smell really special?

Betty Schaefer:
It must be my new shampoo.

Joe Gillis:
That's no shampoo. It's more like freshly-laundered linen handkerchiefs, like a brand new automobile.

Norma Desmond:
My astrologist has read my horoscope, he's read DeMille's horoscope.

Joe Gillis:
Has he read the script?

Norma Desmond:
There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn't good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!

First assistant director:
I can tell her you're all tied up in the projection room. I can give her the brush.

Cecil B. DeMille:
Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn't that enough?

Norma Desmond:
No one leaves a star. That's what makes one a star.

Norma Desmond:
All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.