"As I drove back towards town, I took inventory of my prospects. They now added up to exactly zero. Apparently, I just didn't have what it takes. And the time had come to wrap up the whole Hollywood deal and go home."

"Well, this is where you came in, back at that pool again, the one I always wanted. It's dawn now and they must have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a couple of pruning hooks from the garden and fished me out... ever so gently. Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead."

"The poor dope. He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool."

"Wait a minute, haven't I seen you before? I know your face."

"Get out! Or shall I call my servant?"

"You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big."

"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

"I didn't know you were planning a comeback."

"I hate that word. It's a return. A return to the millions of people who have never forgiven me for deserting the screen."

"We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"

"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!"

"I'm not an executive, just a writer."

"You are, are you? Writing words, words, more words! Well, you'll make a rope of words and strangle this business! With a microphone there to catch the last gurgles, and Technicolor to photograph the red, swollen tongues!"

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

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

"She must be a million years old."

"I hate to think where that puts me. I could be her father."

"You didn't know Norma Desmond as a lovely little girl of 17 - with more courage and wit and heart, that ever came together in one youngster."

"I understand she was a terror to work with."

"Only toward the end. You know, a dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit."

"I can tell her you're all tied up in the projection room. I can give her the brush."

"Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn't that enough?"

"The last time I saw you was someplace very gay! I remember waving to you. I was dancing on a table!"

"A lot of people were. Lindbergh had just landed in Paris."

"Get Gordon Cole. Tell him to forget about her car. Tell him he can get another old car some place. I'll buy him 5 old cars if necessary."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Gillis, but I just didn't think it was any good. I found it flat and trite."

"Exactly what kind of material do you recommend? James Joyce? Dostoyevsky?"

"I just think that pictures should say a little something."

"Oh, one of the message kids. Just a story won't do. You'd have turned down Gone With the Wind."

"No, that was me. I said, 'Who wants to see a Civil War picture?'"

"So, you take plot 27A, make it glossy, make it slick?"

"Eh-eh-eh-eh. Those are dirty words. You sound like a bunch of New York critics."

"Of course, we're always looking for a Betty Hutton. Do you see it as a Betty Hutton?"

"Frankly, no."

"No, wait a minute. If we made it a girls softball team. Put in a few numbers. Might make a cute musical: 'It Happened in the Bullpen - A Story of a Woman'."

"That'll be all Miss Kramer... Schaefer."

"Next time I'll write you 'The Naked and the Dead'."

"Well, seems like Zanuck's got himself a baseball picture."

"Perhaps the reason I hated 'Bases Loaded' is that I knew your name. I'd always heard you had some talent."

"That was last year. This year I'm trying to earn a living."

"Don't you sometimes hate yourself?"

"Constantly."

"Oh, the old familiar story. You help a timid little soul cross a crowded street, she turns out to be a multimillionaire and leaves you all her money."

"That's the trouble with you readers. You know all the plots."

"We don't need two cars, we have a car. Not one of those cheap new things made of chromium and spit, an Isotta-Fraschini. Have you ever heard of Isotta-Fraschini? All handmade. Cost me $28,000."

"As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?"

"You don't yell at a sleepwalker - he may fall and break his neck. That's it: she was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career."

"The whole place seemed to have been stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis - out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion."

"There was a tennis court... or rather the ghost of a tennis court... with faded markings."

"Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad - bad writing can be. This promised to go the limit."

"Don't be silly. Here, I was going to give it to you at midnight."

"Norma, I can't take it, you've bought me enough."

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

"Keep it."

"Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, pumping, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!"

"Cut out that 'us' business!"

"What right do you have to take me for granted?"

"What right? Do you want me to tell you?"

"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?"

"Who? Some car hop, or dress extra?"

"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!"

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

"You really going to send that script to DeMille?"

"Yes, I am! This is the day! Here's the chart from my astrologer. She read DeMille's horoscope, she read mine."

"Did she read the script?"

"DeMille is Leo. I'm Scorpio. Mars' been transiting Jupiter for weeks. Today is the day of greatest conjunction."

"The plain fact was she was afraid of that world outside. Afraid it would remind her that time had passed."

"I had ten years of dramatic lessons, diction, dancing. Then, the studio made a test. Well, they didn't like my nose - slanted, this way a little. So, I went to a doctor and had it fixed. They made more tests and they were crazy about my nose. Only, they didn't like my acting."

"Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago. Now, face it."

"That's a lie! They still want me!"

"Those idiot producers. Those imbeciles. Haven't they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I'll show them! I'll be up there again, so help me!"

"There were three young directors who showed promise in those days: D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Max Von Mayerling."

"And she's turned you into a servant."

"It was I who asked to come back, as humiliating as it may seem. I could have continued my career; only I found everything unendurable after she'd left me. You see, I was her first husband."

"Tell her, Max. C'mon, do her that favor. Tell her there isn't going to be any picture. Tell her there are no fan letters other than the ones you write."

"It's not true! Max!"

"Madame is the greatest star of them all."

"Norma, you're a woman of 50, now grow up. There's nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you try to be 25."

"The greatest star of them all."

"I can't go on with the scene. I'm too happy. Mr. DeMille, do you mind if I say a few words? Thank you. I just want to tell you all how happy I am to be back in the studio, making a picture again! You don't know how much I've missed all of you."

"I'm not an executive, just a writer."

"Coroner's office. I want to speak to the coroner. Who's on this phone?"

"I am. Now, get off. This is more important. Times City Desk? Hedda Hopper speaking. I'm talking from the bedroom of Norma Desmond. Don't bother with a rewrite man, take it direct! Ready? As day breaks..."

"Where have you been keeping yourself? I've got the most wonderful news for you."

"I haven't been keeping myself at all, lately."

"So they were turning after all, those cameras. Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had enfolded her."

"You heard him. I'm a star."

"And I promise you I'll never desert you again because after 'Salome' we'll make another picture and another picture. You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!"

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

"I'd be delighted, if you'd let me produce it, but it wouldn't be for Miss Desmond. It would be for your girl Betty Hutton, or perhaps one of the new ones, like June Allyson."

"You're crazy, Gillis. You know that, don't you? You're a classic. Salome, a million dollars worth of magnificent palaces and veils and a 50-year-old woman playing a girl of 16. I don't think DeMille is that crazy."

"I am writing a movie about me. It's going to be the biggest picture ever made. A story so important that I myself will play the leading role."

"You know, they have taken all my pictures and sold them to television. Do you believe that? They didn't even ask me. They didn't even give me a print. They're still showing them. The other night I turned on the television and there I was! In the 'Poverty Row' series. I didn't even know they were still running them."

"You're a kept man, Joe. And you know it. It's just a question of whether you're man enough to admit it."

"They don't want actors anymore. They just want names. Pretty faces, that's all. No talent, just names."

"Without me, there wouldn't be any Paramount Studio."

"I see you're still wearing the same clothes. Why don't you buy yourself some new ones?"

"A picture is nothing but a business. A business that made you rich and famous. And you want to turn it into a religion."

"Stars are ageless, aren't they?"

"Funny, how gentle people get with you once you're dead."