- Grandmother Lettie: If you've got one drop of my blood in your veins, you won't let Mattie or any of her kind break your heart, you'll go right out there and break it yourself.
- Grandmother Lettie: Tragedy is a test of courage. If you can meet it bravely, it will leave you bigger than it found you. If not than you will have to live all you life as a coward, because no matter where you may run you can never run away from yourself.
- Grandmother Lettie: Esther, everyone in this world who has ever dreamed about better things has been laughed at, don't you know that? But there's a difference between dreaming and doing. The dreamers just sit around and moon about how wonderful it would be if only things were different. And the years roll on and by and by they grow and they forget everything, even about their dreams. Oh yes, you want to be somebody, but you want it to be easy. Oh you modern girls give me a pain!
- Norman Maine: Do you think I'm slipping?
- Oliver Niles: Can you take it?
- Norman Maine: Yeah, go ahead.
- Oliver Niles: The tense is wrong. You're not slipping - you've slipped.
- Oliver Niles: [Referring to Norman's accommodations at a sanatorium for treatment of alcoholism] Are you comfortable here, Norman?
- Norman Maine: Comfortable? It's positively luxurious! They even have iron bars in the windows to keep out the draft.
- Aunt Mattie: Of course, no one ever listens to me!
- Grandmother Lettie: They do if they're within ten miles of ya.
- Oliver Niles: [to Esther] All the experts seems to think that your type is a little mild for present day's taste. But I'd rather believe that tastes change, like eyebrows. And I think that also like eyebrows, tastes are going back to the natural.
- Esther Blodgett: Some day you won't laugh at me! I'm going out and have a real life! I'm gonna be somebody!
- Norman Maine: What do they do with the actors while you're away?
- Matt Libby: Oh, they cut 'em into slices and fry 'em with eggs.
- Oliver Niles: Now, I'm going to turn you over to our demon press agent, Libby. Don't let him frighten you. He has a heart of gold... only harder.
- Miss Phillips - Central Casting Clerk: Still want to go in the movies? You know what your chances are? One in a hundred thousand.
- Esther Blodgett: But maybe... I'm that one.
- Grandmother Lettie: [speaking at the Hollywood premiere to the radio audience] It took me more than 70... more than 60 years to get here, and here I mean to stay!
- Grandmother Lettie Blodgett: For every dream of yours you make come true, you'll pay the price in heartbreak.
- Pop Randall - Landlord: Mr. McGuire is a big director.
- Esther Victoria Blodgett - aka Vicki Lester: Oh, are you really? Oh, could you possibly use me in a picture, Mr. McGuire? Of course, I haven't had much experience, but I don't think that really matters if you're willing. And I really feel that...
- Danny McGuire: Listen, lady. In the first place, I'm not a director; I'm an assistant director. In the second place, if I had any jobs to give away, I'd confer one on myself. And in the third place, you should have stayed back home in the first place.
- Norman Maine: [When Esther is accepting her Academy Award] I won one of those once - They don't mean a thing! What I want is a special award for the worst performance of the year. Lord knows I earned it!
- Matt Libby: That elopement thing is out; we're gonna have a wedding. Where are we going to have it?
- Oliver Niles: The customary place, I believe, is a church.
- Matt Libby: Nah! It's been done. This has gotta be something big... The beach! I can visualize it. The bridesmaids in bathing suits; twenty thousand Santa Monica school children spelling out the word "love"... but is it big enough?
- Danny McGuire: The program tonight's gonna be swell. Take this fella Beethoven: I'm a pushover for him. And Chopin - well, he's not so dusty, either.