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.
Adam Dunne: Harry is an artist without an art.
Mary Bristol: What does that mean?
Adam Dunne: Well, that is something that could make a man very unhappy, Mary, groping for the right level, the means with which to express himself.
Mary Bristol: Yes, he is that. Is not he? I like that, Adam. It is a very nice thought.
Adam Dunne: Yes, but it can be dangerous.
Dr. Swanson: Well, he won't get very far, that's for sure. He hasn't got enough blood left in him to keep a chicken alive.
Charlotte Inwood: He was an abominable man. Why do women marry abominable men?
Edie Johnson: It's none of your business what I do. It's a respectable job and I pay my own way.
Dr. Dan Wharton: And you are not living in Beaver Canal anymore?
Edie Johnson: Yeah I've come up in the world. I used to live in a sewer and now I live in a swamp. All those babes do it in the movies. By now I ought to be married to the governor and paying blackmail so he don't find out I once lived in Beaver Canal.