- Joe Gillis: Wait a minute, haven't I seen you before? I know your face.
- Norma Desmond: Get out! Or shall I call my servant?
- 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.
- [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, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.
- 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 (as narrator): 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.
- 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.
- 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 a little something.
- Joe Gillis: Oh, one of the message kids. Just a story won't do. You'd have turned down Gone With the Wind.
- Sheldrake: No, that was me. I said, "Who wants to see a Civil War picture?"
- 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.
- 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 (as narrator): The poor dope - he always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.
- Joe Gillis (as narrator): 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.
- 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 photograph the red, swollen tongues!
- Joe Gillis (as narrator): 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.
- Norma Desmond: You heard him. I'm a star.
- 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.
- Norma Desmond: The greatest star of them all.
- 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.
- Max Von Mayerling: There were three young directors who showed promise in those days: D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Max Von Mayerling.
- Joe Gillis: And she's turned you into a servant.
- Max Von Mayerling: 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.
- Norma Desmond: 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!
- Policeman: [calling on the phone] Coroner's office. I want to speak to the coroner. Who's on this phone?
- Hedda Hopper: [in Norma's room, on the 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...
- Betty Schaefer: I've been hoping to run into you.
- Joe Gillis: What for? To recover that knife you stuck in my back?
- Cecil B. DeMille: 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.
- First assistant director: I understand she was a terror to work with.
- Cecil B. DeMille: Only toward the end. You know, a dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.
- Norma Desmond: 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.
- Joe Gillis (as narrator): 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.
- Joe Gillis: 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.
- Norma Desmond: It's not true! Max!
- Max Von Mayerling: Madame is the greatest star of them all.
- Norma Desmond: They took the idols and smashed them, the Fairbankses, the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who've we got now? Some nobodies!
- [the salesman thinks Joe is a gigolo]
- Salesman: [whispering in Joe's ear] As long as the lady is paying for it, why not take the Vicuna?
- [after hearing that Norma Desmond has come to see DeMille]
- First assistant director: I can tell her you're all tied up in the projection room. I can give her the brush.
- Cecil B. DeMille: Thirty million fans have given her the brush. Isn't that enough?
- Betty Schaefer: Where have you been keeping yourself? I've got the most wonderful news for you.
- Joe Gillis: I haven't been keeping myself at all, lately.
- Joe Gillis (as narrator): [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.
- Joe Gillis: You really going to send that script to DeMille?
- Norma Desmond: Yes, I am! This is the day! Here's the chart from my astrologer. She read DeMille's horoscope, she read mine.
- Joe Gillis: Did she read the script?
- Norma Desmond: DeMille is Leo. I'm Scorpio. Mars' been transiting Jupiter for weeks. Today is the day of *greatest* conjunction.
- Joe Gillis (as narrator): The plain fact was she was afraid of that world outside. Afraid it would remind her that time had passed.
- Joe Gillis: [Norma threatens suicide again] Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago. Now, face it.
- Norma Desmond: That's a lie! They still want me!
- Norma Desmond: Don't be silly.
- [hands Joe a present]
- Norma Desmond: Here, I was going to give it to you at midnight.
- Joe Gillis: Norma, I can't take it, you've bought me enough.
- Norma Desmond: Shut up, I'm rich! I'm richer than all this new Hollywood trash! I've got a million dollars.
- Joe Gillis: Keep it.
- Norma Desmond: Own three blocks downtown, I've got oil in Bakersfield, pumping, *pumping*, pumping! What's it for but to buy us anything we want!
- Joe Gillis: Cut out that "us" business!
- Norma Desmond: What's the matter with you?
- Joe Gillis: What right do you have to take me for granted?
- Norma Desmond: What right? Do you want me to tell you?
- Joe Gillis: 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?
- Norma Desmond: Who? Some car hop, or dress extra?
- Joe Gillis: 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!
- Norma Desmond: What you're trying to say is that you don't want me to love you. Say it. Say it!
- [slaps him hard across the face]
- Betty Schaefer: 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.
- Norma Desmond: 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.
- Norma Desmond: 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!
- Joe Gillis (as narrator): Come think of it, the whole place seemed to have been stricken with the 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 and a sagging net... And of course she had a pool. Who didn't then? Mabel Norman and John Gilbert must have swum in it ten thousand midnights ago... It was empty now. Or was it?
- [cut to close-up of rats]
- [first lines]
- Joe Gillis: Yes, this is Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, California. It's about 5 o'clock in the morning. That's the homicide squad, complete with detectives and newspaper men.
- Joe Gillis (as narrator): [who has just has a visit from two men trying to repossess his car] I was way ahead of the finance company. I knew they'd be becoming around and I wasn't taking any chances. So I kept it across the street in a parking lot behind Rudy's shoeshine parlour. Rudy never asked any questions about your finances... he'd just look at your heels and know the score.
- Woman at Paramount Studio: Norma Desmond!
- Paramount Security Guard: Why, I thought she was dead.
- Betty Schaefer: I think you should throw out all that psychological mess - exploring the killer's sick mind.
- Joe Gillis: Psychopaths sell like hotcakes!
- Joe Gillis: May I say that you smell really special?
- Betty Schaefer: It must be my new shampoo.
- Joe Gillis: That's no shampoo. It's more like freshly-laundered linen handkerchiefs, like a brand new automobile. How old are you anyway?
- Betty Schaefer: Twenty-two.
- Joe Gillis: Smart girl. Nothing like being twenty-two.
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