William Holden
(as Joe Gillis)
Joe Gillis:
[narrating] 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.
Gloria Swanson
(as Norma Desmond)
William Holden
(as Joe Gillis)
Joe Gillis:
[voice-over] 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.
William Holden
(as Joe Gillis)
Joe Gillis:
[voice-over] 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.
William Holden
(as Joe Gillis)
Joe Gillis:
[who has just has a visit from two men trying to repossess his car]
[narrating]
Joe Gillis: 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.
[narrating]
Joe Gillis: 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.
William Holden
(as Joe Gillis)
Joe Gillis:
Audiences don't know somebody sits down and writes a picture; they think the actors make it up as they go along.
Gloria Swanson
(as Norma Desmond)
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.
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.
Gloria Swanson
(as Norma Desmond)
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!
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!
William Holden
(as Joe Gillis)
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.
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.
William Holden
(as Joe Gillis)
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.
