- Jonathan: Don't worry. Some of the best movies are made by people working together who hate each other's guts.
- Jonathan: Because he was a drunk, you're a drunk. Because he loved women, you're a tramp. But you forget one thing: he did it with style.
- James Lee: Yes, this is James Lee Bartlow... Paris?... Mr. Shields!... is Mr. Shields paying for this call?... All right, put him on... Hello, Jonathan? Drop dead.
- Harry Pebbel: I've told you a hundred times. I don't want to win awards. Give me pictures that end with a kiss and black ink on the books.
- Jonathan: [to Georgia] Well, congratulations, you've got it all laid out for you, so you can wallow in pity for yourself. The betrayed woman. The wounded doe with all the drivel that goes with it going through your mind right now. Oh, he doesn't love me at all. He was lying. All those lovely moments, those tender words... He's lying. He's cheap and cruel. Well, maybe I like Lilas. Maybe I like to be cheap once in a while! Maybe everyone does, or don't you remember?
- James Lee: My first novel, on which I had labored for seven years, was just out. Surprisingly for a scholarly work on early Virginia, it was doing a brisk nationwide sale - possibly because it was liberally peppered with sex. Because, after all, early Virginia was liberally peppered with sex. Could that have been why Hollywood bought it?
- Jonathan: [whistles] Gentlemen! There seems to be an honest difference of opinion.
- Harry Pebbel: There is.
- Jonathan: It looks as though we'll have to make a compromise.
- Harry Pebbel: You bet we will.
- Jonathan: The compromise, gentlemen, is this: Harry, shut your penny-pinching mouth and build him his platform!
- Fred: Jonathan is more than a man, he's an experience. And he's habit-forming. If they could ever bottle him, he'd outsell ginger ale.
- Jonathan: When an audience pays to see a picture like this, what are they paying for?
- Fred: To get the pants scared off of 'em.
- Jonathan: And what scares the human race more than any other single thing?
- [crosses to wall switch and turns out the light]
- Fred: The dark!
- Jonathan: Of course. And why? Because the dark has a life of its own. In the dark, all sorts of things come alive.
- Fred: Suppose... suppose we never do show the cat men. Is that what you're thinking.
- Jonathan: Exactly.
- Fred: No cat men!
- Jonathan: [to Georgia about her screen test] And I know I'm right about you. I gave you no help. The test was atrocious, but bad as it was, it proved one thing: when you're on the screen, no matter who you're with, what you're doing, the audience is looking at YOU. That's star quality... Lorrison quality.
- Georgia: People who knew my father give me the extra work and a line to say every now and then. I drink what I want, I see who I want. Who knows? Someday I may even get married, to a nice, upright, assistant's assistant.
- Jonathan: Mr. Von Ellstein, am I to understand that you consider this scene complete?
- Von Ellstein: I do.
- Jonathan: Well I don't. You call that directing?
- Von Ellstein: That is what I have been calling it for 32 years.
- Jonathan: Why, there are values and dimensions in that scene you haven't begun to hit!
- Von Ellstein: Perhaps they're not the values and dimensions I wish to hit. I could make this scene a climax. I could make every scene in this picture a climax. If I did, I would be a bad director. And I like to think of myself as one of the best. A picture all climaxes is like a necklace without a string: it falls apart. You must build to your big moment. And sometimes you must build slowly...
- Jonathan: Look, when I want a lecture on the aesthetics of motion pictures, I'll ask for it. And it won't be on my time, and it won't be a cover-up for a shallow and inept interpretation of a great scene! To be a director, you must have imagination.
- Von Ellstein: Whose imagination, Mr. Shields? Yours or mine?
- Von Ellstein: There is only one answer to that. You see this picture one way, and I another. It'll be done your way, but not by me, and not by any other director who respects himself. You know what you must do, Mr. Shields, so that you will have it exactly as you want it? You must direct this picture yourself.
- [Von Ellstein starts walking away, stops and turns to Shields]
- Von Ellstein: To direct a picture, a man needs humility. Do you have humility, Mr. Shields?