Sunset Boulevard Quotes

"The poor dope...

He always wanted a pool." - Joe

"Nobody important really...

Just a movie writer with a couple of B pictures to his credit" - Joe

"If I lose my car it's like...

having my legs cut off"

"He was a smart producer,...

with a set of ulcers to prove it" - Joe

"I just think pictures should...

say a little something" - Betty

"It was like that woman in...

great expectations" - Joe

"Apparently I just didn't have...

what it takes" - Joe

"I am big...

it's the pictures that got small." - Norma

"Wait a minute haven't...

I seen you ...." - Joe

"I hate that word (comeback)...

it's a return." - Norma

"Sometimes it's interesting to see just...

how bad, bad writing can be." - Joe

"The whole place seems to have been stricken with a paralysis,...

out of beat with the rest of the world" - Joe

"And of course she had a pool,...

who didn't then?" - Joe

"Was her life really as...

empty as that?" - Joe

"The plain fact was that she was afraid of...

that world outside. Afraid it would remind her that time had passed" - Joe

"It wasn't so simple getting some

coherence into that wild scrambled melodrama of hers." - Joe

"You don't yell at...

a sleep walker" - Joe

"We didn't need dialogue, ...

we had faces" - Norma

"They were always her pictures, that's...

all she wanted to see" - Joe

"Dim figures you might still remember...

from the silent days" - Joen

"As long as the lady is paying for it why not...

take the Vicuna" - Salesman

"She has moments of...

melancholy" - Max

"The perfect setting for a...

silent movie queen" - Joe on Norma's bedroom

"I felt caught like that cigarette in...

the prongs of that contraption on her finger" - Joe

"Has it ever occurred that...

I may have a life of my own?" - Joe

"Great stars have...

great pride" - Norma

"To fall in love with you, that...

was the idiotic thing" - Norma

"As a fact I have...

given up writing all together" - Joe

"DeMille always said I was...

his greatest star" - Norma

"I've waited twenty years for this call. DeMille can...

wait until I'm good and ready"

"Without me there wouldn't be...

any Paramount Studios" - Norma

"Norma Desmond, she must be...

a million years old" - First Assistance

"I hear she was a terror to...

work with." - First Assistant

"Thirty million fans have given her...

the brush. Isn't that enough?"

"A dozen press agents working overtime can do...

terrible things to the human spirit" - DeMille

"Hog-Eye turn that light back...

where it belongs" - DeMille

"I don't care about the money I...

just want to work again" - Norma to DeMille

"An army of beauty experts...

invaded her house" - Joe to the audience

"Ready for those cameras that...

would never turn" - Joe

"That story of mine Betty Schaefer had dug up...

kept going through my head like a dozen locomotives" - Joe

"All cardboard, all hollow, all phony...

all filled with mirrors. I like it better than any street in the world." - Betty

"We're not helping her any, feeding...

her lies and more lies" - Joe

"I made her...

a star. And I cannot let her be destroyed" - Max

"What’s wrong with being on the

other side of the cameras? It's really more fun" - Betty

"Madame is the greatest...

star of them all" - Max

"There's nothing tragic about being...

fifty, not unless you're trying to be twenty five" - Joe

"No one ever leaves a...

star, that's what makes one a star" - Norma

"Funny how gentle people get...

with you once you're dead" - Joe

"Life which can be strangely...

merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond" - Joe

"The dream that she had clung to so...

desperately had unfolded her" - Joe

"Just us and the cameras and those

people out there in the dark" - Norma

"I'm ready for my...

closeup." - Norma

"You've made a rope of words and...

strangled this business!" - Norma