"In any real city, you walk, you brush past people, and people bump into you. In L.A, nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other just so we can feel something."

"Ryan Phillippe - Officer Hanson"

"Thandie Newton - Christine"

"Loretta Devine - Shaniqua"

"Karina Arroyave - Elizabeth"

"Ludacris - Anthony"

"Terrence Howard - Cameron"

"William Fichtner - Flanagan"

"Jennifer Esposito - Ria"

"Matt Dillon - Officer Ryan"

"Don Cheadle - Graham"

"Gary Merrill - Bill Sampson"

"Thelma Ritter - Birdie Coonan"

"Marilyn Monroe - Miss Caswell"

"Barbara Bates - Phoebe"

"Gregory Ratoff - Max Fabian"

"Hugh Marlowe - Lloyd Richards"

"Celeste Holm - Karen Richards"

"George Sanders - Addison DeWitt"

"Anne Baxter - Eve Harrington"

"Bette Davis - Margo Channing"

"Old Actor: [about Eve] We know her humility, her devotion, her loyalty to her art, her love, her deep and abiding love for us, for what we are and what we do, the theater. She has had one wish, one prayer, one dream - to belong to us. Tonight, her dream has come true. And henceforth, we shall dream the same of her."

"Max Fabian: She loves me like a father. Also, she's loaded."

"Bill Sampson: The theatah, the theatAh - what book of rules says the theater exists only within some ugly buildings crowded into one square mile of New York City? Or London, Paris, or Vienna? Listen, junior. And learn. Want to know what the theater is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band - all theater. Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience - there's theater. Donald Duck, Ibsen, and the Lone Ranger. Sarah Bernhardt and Poodles Hanneford, Lunt and Fontanne, Betty Grable, Rex the Wild Horse, Eleanora Duse - they're all theater. You don't understand them, you don't like them all - why should you? The theater's for everybody - you included, but not exclusively - so don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your theater, but it's theater for somebody, somewhere...It's just that there's so much bourgeois in this ivory green room they call the theater. Sometimes it gets up around my chin."

"Bill Sampson: Zanuck is impatient. He wants me, he needs me."

"The bed looks like a dead animal act."

"I'll tell ya how, like, like she's studyin' you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints. How you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep."

"I haven't got a union. I'm slave labor."

"She can play Peck's Bad Boy all she wants and who's to stop her? Who's to give her that boot in the rear she needs and deserves?"

"The atmosphere is very MacBeth-ish...what has, or is about to, happen?"

"There are very few moments in life as good as this. Let's remember it. To each of us and all of us, never have we been more close, may we never be farther apart."

"It's Addison from start to finish. It drips with his brand of venom. Taking advantage of a kid like that, twisting her words, making her say what he wanted her to say."

"[about Eve] I like that girl, that quality of quiet graciousness."

"Lloyd never got around somehow to asking whether it was all right with me for Eve to play Cora. Bill, oddly enough, refused to direct the play at first - with Eve in it. Lloyd and Max finally won him over. Margo never came to rehearsal. Too much to do around the house, she said. I'd never known Bill and Lloyd to fight as bitterly and often and always over some business for Eve, or a move, or the way she read a speech. But then I'd never known Lloyd to meddle as much with Bill's directing, as far as it affected Eve, that is. Somehow Eve kept them going. Bill stuck it out. Lloyd seemed happy. And I thought it might be best if I skipped rehearsals from then on. It seemed to me I had known always that it would happen, and here it was. I felt helpless, that helplessness you feel when you have no talent to offer - outside of loving your husband. How could I compete? Everything Lloyd loved about me, he had gotten used to long ago."

"Eve would ask Abbott to give her Costello."

"That cynicism you refer to I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys."

"Newton, they say, thought of gravity by getting hit on the head by an apple. And the man who invented the steam engine - he was watching a tea kettle. Not me. My big idea came to me just sitting on a couch. That boot in the rear to Margo. Heaven knows she had one coming. From me, from Lloyd, from Eve, Bill, Max, and so on. We'd all felt those size 5's of hers often enough. But how? The answer was buzzing around me like a fly. I had it. But I let it go. Screaming and calling names is one thing, but this could mean...Why not? Why, I said to myself, not? It would all seem perfectly legitimate. And there were only two people in the world who would know. Also, the boot would land where it would do the most good for all concerned. And after all, it was no more than a perfectly harmless joke that Margo herself would be the first to enjoy. And no reason why she shouldn't be told about it - in time."

"[to Eve, who is upset] The reason is Margo, and don't try to figure it out. Einstein couldn't."

"Then stop being a star. And stop treating your guests as your supporting cast...It's about time Margo realized that what's attractive on stage need not necessarily be attractive off."