- Val: You know, I would kill for this job, but the people I want to kill are the people offering me the job.
- Ed: [Reading audience response card] Would you recommend this film to a friend? Not unless I was friendly with Hitler...
- Ellie: You had all the symptoms but not the disease.
- Val: You used to think I was creative and original.
- Ellie: I still do, as a filmmaker. Its when you became creative as a hypochondriac - that was it.
- Val: Hey, all those attacks were for real.
- Ellie: Oh yeah?
- Val: Yes!
- Ellie: The Black Plague, Val? An allergy to oxygen? Elm blight? Only trees get elm blight - elm trees.
- Male Party Guest #1: Hitchcock was an artist, but, he was commercial.
- Val: You say that like it's a good thing?
- Female Party Guest: No. Well, you have to be both. I mean he knew what he was doing, you know. So, you know, in order to make movies you have to think about the audience. You have to - otherwise you're just making movies for yourself. It's like, eh, like artistic masturbation.
- Male Party Guest #2: That's right. That's right. You're a narcissist.
- Val: Well, I'm a classic narcissist then.
- Val: ...driving around his 1938 Vintage Roadster. If someone saw me in a vintage '38, they'd think I was Himmler!
- Val: We once had a discussion about music and he threatened to push me down a flight of stairs.
- Psychiatrist: What happened?
- Val: It worked. He pushed me down a flight of stairs.
- Val: She's living with a guy the best you can say about him is that sometimes he returns phone calls.
- Val: I came to hold out an olive branch.
- Tony Waxman: "An olive branch"? What is this, the Israeli parliament?
- Val: Pass! I'm not going to work with Hal Yeager and Ellie. You gotta be kidding. He's a Philistine and she's a Quisling. Its a religious conflict.
- Male Party Guest #1: We were just talking about Alfred Hitchcock. Truffaut says that "Notorious" is his best film.
- Val: I agree! I agree. A masterpiece.
- Lori: What are you talking about? You hate that - he hates that movie. The ending makes you crazy!
- Val: Yes. Cause its a masterpiece. Every time I watch that movie, when Cary Grant is is carrying Ingrid Bergman down the staircase, I always think that the Germans are gonna catch them. No matter how many times I see it! I think the Germans are gonna get 'em.
- Ellie: I hear that she's all sugar and sweetness and gets into your good graces and then - Wham! You know, she kept telling Sean Madigan how she loved all of his films and she was a big fan and how he was a great, I don't know, unique American artist. And then in the profile she did, she disemboweled him.
- Val: If you happen to fall for that kind of flattery, you know, I can handle it, though.
- Ellie: Please! You couldn't handle Shirley Temple.
- Sharon Bates: If I act with a fine director, like yourself, I - there's nothing I wouldn't do sexual for him.
- Val: Oh, well you should, you should take a full page ad in the DJ magazine stating that because you'll never stop working then. Can, is it possible to - to open the door for me because of all the heavy breathing, it has steamed my glasses.
- Ellie: What are you going to do? Are you, are you going to edit it blind, too? Put in the music blind? Go to the premiere blind? At least you won't be able to read the reviews.
- Hal: Its not easy sitting through three hours of pure adulation.
- Ellie: Frankly, I'll tell you, I don't, I don't know how you can do it.
- Hal: Why? You don't want to rob them the opportunity of, you know, demonstrating their gratitude.
- Ellie: Yeah, no wonder we both have to drink so much at these affairs.
- Val: I got the last plane out of Toronto. Hey, have you ever seen Canada? Now I know why there's no crime up there.
- [Val has just seen the terrible work of his latest film he directed while blind]
- Val: Call Dr. Kevorkian.
- Val: What the hell am I doing in Canada? Lori, they got moose up here. Moose. Are moose carnivorous?
- Val: At the Plaza Hotel. For God's sake, I got the bill. You had the escargot that afternoon. It's so disgusting. Sex and snails with that roast beef from Beverly Hills.
- Val: Hal's not gonna know. You know, unless you tell him, you know during pillow talk or something. You know, you guys probably don't have pillow talk, he probably has sex with you while he's on the cellular phone.