"Your name is not Eve Harrington. It is Gertrude Slescynski... It is also true that you worked in a brewery, But life in the brewery was not as dull as you pictured it. As a matter of fact it got less and less dull - until your boss's wife had your boss followed by detectives! The five hundred dollars you got to get out of town brought you straight to New York. Fourth. There was no Eddie - no pilot - and you've never been married! That was not only a lie, but an insult to dead heroes and to the women who love them... Fifth, San Francisco has no Shubert Theatre. You've never been to San Francisco! That was a stupid lie and easy to expose. Eve cries and admits she had to do something, to say something, be somebody to make her like me. [Margo Channing]"

"[confronting Eve] I had lunch with Karen not three hours ago. As always with women who try to find out things, she told more than she learned. Now do you want to change your story about Lloyd beating at your door the other night? ... 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 a contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition - and talent. We deserve each other...and you realize and you agree how completely you belong to me?"

"We all have abnormality in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk; We are the original displaced personalities."

"I have lived in the theater as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world; no other life - and once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another...there are others, three or four. Eve Harrington will be among them."

"Every now and then some elder statesman of the theater or cinema assures the public that actors and actresses are just plain folks. Ignoring the fact that their greatest attraction to the public is their complete lack of resemblance to normal human beings."

"Dear Margo. You were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again soon."

"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. Eve. Eve the Golden Girl, the Cover Girl, the Girl Next Door, the Girl on the Moon. Time has been good to Eve. Life goes where she goes. She's the profiled, covered, revealed, reported. What she eats and what she wears and whom she knows and where she was, and when and where she's going. Eve. You all know all about Eve. What can there be to know that you don't know?"

"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."

"There are in general two types of theatrical producers. One has a great many wealthier friends who will risk a tax deductible loss. This type is interested in art. The other is one to whom each production means potential ruin or fortune. This type is out to make a buck."

"She is the wife of a playwright, therefore of the theater by marriage. Nothing in her background or breeding should have brought her any closer to the stage than Row E, Center. However, during her senior year at Radcliffe, Lloyd Richards lectured on the drama. The following year, Karen became Mrs. Lloyd Richards."

"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 De Witt. 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."

"The Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement is perhaps unknown to you. It has been spared the sensational and commercial publicity that attends such questionable 'honors' as the Pulitzer Prize - and those awards presented annually by that film society. This is the dining hall of the Sarah Siddons Society. The occasion is its annual banquet and presentation of the highest honor our theater knows - the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement...The minor awards, as you can see, have already been presented. Minor awards are for such as the writer and director [playwright Lloyd Richards and director Bill Sampson are briefly viewed] since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it. And no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington. Eve. But more of Eve later, all about Eve, in fact."

"Lloyd Richards. He's going to leave Karen. We're going to be married...Lloyd loves me, I love him...I'm in love with Lloyd...Oh Addison, won't it be just perfect? Lloyd and I - there's no telling how far we can go. He'll write great plays for me, I'll make them great."

"I'll never forget this night as long as I live, and I'll never forget you for making it possible."

"If nothing else, there's applause... like waves of love pouring over the footlights and wrapping you up."

"And there were theaters in San Francisco. And then one night, Margo Channing came to play in Remembrance and I went to see it. Well, here I am."

"When you're a secretary in a brewery, it's pretty hard to make-believe you're anything else. Everything is beer."

"But somehow, acting and make believe began to fill up my life more and more. It got so I couldn't tell the real from the unreal. Except that the unreal seemed more real to me."

"I've seen every performance...I'd like anything Miss Channing played in...I think that part of Miss Channing's greatness lies in her ability to pick the best plays."

"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."

"Never have I been so happy...I'm forgiving tonight, even Eve, I forgive Eve...Do you know what I'm going to be?...A married lady...No more make believe off stage or on. Remember, Lloyd? I mean it now...I don't want to play Cora...It isn't the part. It's a great part in a fine play. But not for me anymore. Not for a four-square, upright, downright, forthright married lady...It means I finally got a life to live. I don't have to play parts I'm too old for, just because I've got nothing to do with my nights."

"The little witch must have sent out Indian runners, snatching critics out of bars and steam rooms and museums, or wherever they holed up. Well, she won't get away with it, nor will Addison De Witt and his poison pen. If Equity or my lawyer can't or won't do anything about it, I shall personally stuff that pathetic little lost lamb down Mr. De Witt's ugly throat."

"[responding to Karen's disbelief] In this rat race, everybody's guilty till they're proved innocent!"

"[to Bill] This is my house, not a theater. In my house, you're a guest, not a director."

"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."

"Lloyd, I am not twenty-ish. I am not thirty-ish. Three months ago, I was forty years old. Forty. Four oh - 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."

"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."

"So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me."

"I distinctly remember, Addison, crossing you off my guest list. What are you doing here?"

"Enchanté to you, too!"

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

"Suddenly, I've developed a big protective feeling for her. A lamb loose in our big stone jungle."

"Autograph fiends, they're not people. Those are little beasts that run around in packs like coyotes...They're nobody's fans. They're juvenile delinquents, they're mental defectives, they're nobody's audience. They never see a play or a movie even. They're never indoors long enough."

"Everybody has a heart - except some people."

"No sense being a grifter if it's the same as bein' a citizen."

"James J. Sloyan — Mottola"

"Charles Dierkop — Floyd"

"Robert Earl Jones — Luther Coleman"

"Dimitra Arliss — Loretta Salino"

"Jack Kehoe — Erie Kid"

"Dana Elcar — FBI Agent Polk"

"John Heffernan — Eddie Niles"

"Harold Gould — Kid Twist"

"Eileen Brennan — Billie"

"Ray Walston — J.J. Singleton"

"Charles Durning — Lieutenant William Snyder"

"Robert Shaw — Doyle Lonnegan"

"Paul Newman — Henry "Shaw" Gondorff"

"Robert Redford — Johnny "Kelly" Hooker"

"[to Snyder] Sit down and shut up, will ya? Try not to live up to all my expectations."