- Margo: Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.
- Margo: Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.
- Margo: Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.
- Addison DeWitt: [voiceover] Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.
- Addison DeWitt: That I should want you at all, suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that, in itself, is probably the reason. You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, our contempt for humanity and inability to love, and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.
- Margo: So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.
- Karen: You're Margo, just Margo.
- Margo: And what is that, besides something spelled out in light bulbs, I mean - besides something called a temperament, which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice? Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave - they'd get drunk if they knew how - when they can't have what they want, when they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.
- Margo: Lloyd, honey, be a playwright with guts. Write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.
- Bill Sampson: The theatre. The theatre. What book of rules say the theatre exists only within some ugly buildings crowded into one square mile of New York City? Or London? Paris or Vienna? Listen, Junior, and learn. Do you wanna know what the theatre is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band, all theatre. Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience, there's theatre. Donald Duck, Ibsen and The Lone Ranger. Sarah Bernhardt and Poodles Hanneford. Lunt and Fontanne, Betty Grable. Rex the Wild Horse, Eleonora Duse, all theatre. You don't understand them all. You don't like them all. Why should you? The theatre's for everybody, you included, but not exclusively. So, don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your theatre, but it's theatre for somebody, somewhere.
- Addison DeWitt: [voiceover intro] To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs, or know anything of the world in which you live, it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater.
- [a butler passes by]
- Miss Casswell: Oh, waiter!
- Addison DeWitt: That is not a waiter, my dear, that is a butler.
- Miss Casswell: Well, I can't yell "Oh butler!" can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler.
- Addison DeWitt: You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.
- Miss Casswell: I don't want to make trouble. All I want is a drink.
- Max Fabian: Leave it to me. I'll get you one.
- Miss Casswell: Thank you, Mr. Fabian.
- Addison DeWitt: Well done! I can see your career rise in the east like the sun.
- Eve: If there's nothing else, there's applause. I've listened backstage to people applaud. It's like - like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine, to know every night that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, their eyes shine, you've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.
- Margo: As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.
- Bill Sampson: For instance what?
- Margo: For instance: you!
- Addison DeWitt: You could sleep now, couldn't you?
- Eve: Why not?
- Addison DeWitt: The mark of a true killer: sleep tight, rest easy, and come out fighting.
- Margo: I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.
- Addison DeWitt: And what's your name?
- Phoebe: Phoebe.
- Addison DeWitt: Phoebe?
- Phoebe: I call myself Phoebe.
- Addison DeWitt: And why not? Tell me, Phoebe, do you want someday to have an award like that of your own?
- Phoebe: More than anything else in the world.
- Addison DeWitt: Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.
- Lloyd Richards: How about calling it a night?
- Margo: And you pose as a playwright? A situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is everybody go to sleep.
- Lloyd Richards: I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're HER words she's saying, and HER thoughts she's expressing?
- Margo: Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theatre!
- Bill Sampson: This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to - I'm too mad.
- Margo: Guilty!
- Bill Sampson: Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage and off. I love you for some of them, in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp - all right - but I will not have you sharpen them on me, or on Eve!
- Margo: What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
- Bill Sampson: She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it! Eve Harrington has never, by word, look, thought, or suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me - it spells a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!
- Margo: Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?
- Lloyd Richards: A Hollywood movie star just arrived.
- Margo: Shucks, and I sent my autograph book to the cleaner.
- Margo: [in front of her boyfriend, Bill] I love you, Max. I really mean it. I love you. Come to the pantry.
- [she leaves]
- Max Fabian: [to Bill] She loves me like a father. Also, she's loaded.
- Addison DeWitt: What do you take me for?
- Eve: I don't know that I'd take you for anything.
- Addison DeWitt: Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?
- Eve: I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison, but I don't know what.
- Addison DeWitt: Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.
- Eve: I never intended you to be.
- Addison DeWitt: Yes you did, and you still do.
- Eve: I still don't know what you're getting at, but right now I want to take my nap. It's important...
- Addison DeWitt: It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.
- Eve: Champion to champion.
- Addison DeWitt: Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.
- Eve: Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take my nap?
- Addison DeWitt: Very well - plainly and distinctly - though I consider it unnecessary because you know as well as I do what I'm going to say: Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.
- Eve: What do you mean by that?
- Addison DeWitt: More plainly and more distinctly: I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I have come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd, or anyone else for that matter, because I will not permit it.
- Eve: What have you got to do with it?
- Addison DeWitt: Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.
- Eve: Belong? To you? I can't believe my ears!
- Addison DeWitt: What a dull cliché.
- Eve: Belong to you - why, that sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama!
- Addison DeWitt: So does the history of the world for the past twenty years. I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this. Frankly, I'd hoped that somehow you would have known, that you would have taken it for granted that you and I...
- Eve: Taken it for granted that you and I...
- [laughs]
- Addison DeWitt: [slaps her] Now, remember, as long as you live, never to laugh at me - at anything or anyone else, but never at me.
- Eve: [walks to the door and opens it] Get out!
- Addison DeWitt: You're too short for that gesture. Besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske.
- Bill Sampson: We have to go to City Hall for the marriage license and blood test.
- Margo: I'd marry you if it turned out you had no blood at all.
- [Bill is saying goodbye to Birdie as he departs for Hollywood]
- Bill Sampson: Any messages? What do you want me to tell Tyrone Power?
- Birdie: Just give him my phone number; I'll tell him myself.
- Bill Sampson: Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would not be considered either queenly or motherly.
- Margo: You are in a beehive, pal. Didn't you know? We are all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night. Aren't we honey?
- Margo: Thank you, Eve. I'd like a martini, very dry.
- Bill Sampson: I'll get it.
- [to Eve]
- Bill Sampson: What'll you have?
- Margo: A milkshake?
- Eve: A martini, very dry, please.
- Miss Casswell: Tell me this, do they have auditions for television?
- Addison DeWitt: That's, uh, all television is, my dear, nothing but auditions.
- Margo: I'm being rude now, aren't I? Or should I say, ain't I?
- Addison DeWitt: You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent!
- Lloyd Richards: That bitter cynicism of yours is something you've acquired since you left Radcliffe!
- Karen: The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!
- Bill Sampson: You know, there isn't a playwright in the world who could make me believe this would happen between two adult people. Goodbye, Margo.
- Margo: Bill? Where are you going? To find Eve?
- Bill Sampson: That suddenly makes the whole thing believable.
- Margo: [to Bill] You be the host. It's your party. Happy birthday, welcome home, and we who are about to die salute you.
- [Margo is getting drunk at the party]
- Bill Sampson: Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?
- Margo: It hasn't been laid out, we haven't finished with the embalming. As a matter of fact, you're looking at it - the remains of Margo Channing, sitting up. It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.
- Margo: Margo Channing is ageless - spoken like a press agent.
- Lloyd Richards: I know what I'm talking about. After all, they're my plays.
- Margo: Spoken like an author. Lloyd, I'm not twenty-ish, I'm not thirty-ish. Three months ago I was forty years old. Forty. Four O. That slipped out. I hadn't quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.
- Margo: I distinctly remember, Addison, crossing you off of my guest list. What are you doing here?
- Addison DeWitt: Dear Margo, you were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again, soon. You remember Miss Casswell.
- Margo: I do not. How do you do?
- Miss Casswell: We've never met. Maybe that's why?
- Addison DeWitt: Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana school of the dramatic arts.
- [Eve enters]
- Addison DeWitt: Ah, Eve.
- Eve: Good evening, Mr. DeWitt.
- Margo: I'd no idea you two knew each other.
- Addison DeWitt: This must be at long last our formal introduction. Until now, we've only met in passing.
- Miss Casswell: That's how you met me... in passing.
- Margo: Eve, this is an old friend of Mr. DeWitt's mother. Miss Casswell, Miss Harrington.
- Eve: Miss Casswell.
- Miss Casswell: How do you do?
- Margo: Addison, I've been waiting for you to meet Eve for the longest time.
- Addison DeWitt: It could only have been your natural timidity that kept you from mentioning it.
- Margo: You've heard of her great interest in the theater.
- Addison DeWitt: We have that in common.
- Margo: Then you two must have a long talk.
- Eve: I'm afraid Mr. DeWitt would find me boring before too long.
- Miss Casswell: You won't bore him, honey. You won't even get a chance to talk.
- Addison DeWitt: Claudia, come here.
- [takes her aside]
- Addison DeWitt: You see that man, that's Max Fabian, the producer. Now, go do yourself some good.
- Miss Casswell: Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?
- Addison DeWitt: Because that's what they are.
- [taking her coat]
- Addison DeWitt: Now, go and make him happy.
- [goes back to Margo and drapes the coat over her arm]
- Addison DeWitt: Now, don't worry about your little charge, she'll be in safe hands.
- [walks off with Eve]
- Margo: [watches them go, then lifts her martini] Ah-men.