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: We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
[last lines] Norma Desmond: [to newsreel camera] 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, the cameras, and...
Joe Gillis: [narrating] The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.
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.
Joe Gillis: There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five.
Joe Gillis: Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.
Joe Gillis: [narrating] 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......
First assistant director: [about Norma Desmond] She must be a million years old. Cecil B. DeMille: I hate to think where that puts me. I could be her father.
Norma Desmond: They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!
Betty Schaefer: Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Gillis, but I just didn't think it was any good. I found it flat and trite. Joe Gillis: Exactly what kind of material do you recommend? James Joyce? Dostoyevsky? Betty Schaefer: I just think that pictures should say...
Joe Gillis: I'm not an executive, just a writer. Norma Desmond: 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 ph...
Betty Schaefer: 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. Joe Gillis: That's the trouble with you readers, you know all the plots
Joe Gillis: [Joe is reading Norma's script] Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be. This promised to go the limit.
Betty Schaefer: I've been hoping to run into you. Joe Gillis: What for? To recover that knife you stuck in my back?
Norma Desmond: Without me, there wouldn't be any Paramount studio.
Joe Gillis: Norma, you're a woman of 50, now grow up. There's nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you try to be 25.
Betty Schaefer: Perhaps the reason I hated "Bases Loaded" is that I knew your name. I'd always heard you had some talent. Joe Gillis: That was last year. This year I'm trying to earn a living.
