- Dina Moran: Alma, there's nothing I can do.
- Alma Lewellyn: I promised him a mention.
- Dina Moran: I'll try to make it up to you next time. All right?
- Alma Lewellyn: You have no relationship with the past so you've no idea whom you're dismissing so casually.
- Alma Lewellyn: There were three greats in this town: Parsons, Hopper, and Alma Lewellyn. We made the rules. We set the standards. We meted out the punishment. We had the power to make and break careers. Stars, producers, even studio heads were frightened of us, of what we did, and didn't write. You're very smug with your new found power! Well, believe me, it's only on loan. When you've served your purpose, when they're through with you, you'll be standing right where I am.
- Ivan Bock: I may play the screamer because it amuses me, but don't confuse theatrics with reality. This is theatrics.
- [pulls off his wig revealing a bald head]
- Ivan Bock: This is reality. The reality is you function for as long as we allow you to function, otherwise you don't exist. You print one word of this filth, and I'll tear your lungs out.
- Dina Moran: How can one man control all those people?
- Marty Kaplan: Case controls a bushelful of stars. And stars control this business.
- Dina Moran: So no one wants to offend Mr. Case and risk losing out on one of his clients?
- Marty Kaplan: Pussycat, it could mean the difference between a 50-million-dollar gross and a 50-megaton bomb.
- Alan Keyes: [exasperated with Dina's investigative journalism] Oh, stick with sex, Dina. It's what people are really interested in.
- Dina Moran: But I don't know the first thing about writing a gossip column!
- Alan Keyes: Start with who's sleeping with who.
- Dina Moran: Whom.
- Alan Keyes: Forget the grammar; just get the beds right.
- Marty Kaplan: I can't let you go back there, pussycat!
- Dina Moran: Marty, I am not a pussycat anymore!
- Dina Moran: I thought I was brought out here to cover the political scene in California.
- Alan Keyes: Politicians, actors--same thing.
- Mark Case: What you saw was a woman trying to stay afloat with alcohol.
- Dina Moran: And you don't want me to print what I saw?
- Mark Case: Well,do you honestly believe that your readers are entitled to know that Georgia O'Hanlon is an aging, fighting drunk? I mean, will that piece of information really advance the cause of responsible journalism?
- Dina Moran: [Beholding with dismay a sumptuous spread of catered foods] Y'know, a few years back, when gas was twenty cents a gallon, a couple of Englishmen took a tour of this country. And when it was over, they were asked what specific thing most impressed them about America. And they said, the incredible... Well, I thought they were gonna say something like the incredible beauty or the incredible energy or friendliness. You know what they said? The incredible waste. Except for the price of gas, nothing much has changed.
- Alan Keyes: [on the phone with comic strip creator Chester] I am killing the script until you realize you cannot have Mildred Monahan quit the hospital to become a faith healer.
- [buzzes of protest are heaerd from the phone]
- Alan Keyes: I don't care how many times you've been reborn, Chester! The name of the strip is Mildred Monaha, Registered Nurse, so you either get her duffback in that hospital or you find another way of making thirty grand a year!
- [slams down the phone and looks to Dina]
- Alan Keyes: Fourteen surgeons standing around picking their noses,and she cures this guy by slapping him on the forehead. Sometimes I feel like the social director in a loony bin!
- Georgia O'Hanlon: [watching a Bob Hope and Martha Raye film on TV] Y'know,I think this guy's gonna make it... . Pictures were a lot more fun in those days. To watch and to make.
- Alma Lewellyn: I can't tell you how happy I am to be done with that boring column. Hollywood isn't what it used to be. Somehow the stars don't seem to shine as brightly.
- Buddy Harwin: [raging about Georgia's drunken performance] She sings like Harpo Marx and looks like Milton Berle in drag, how's that? Marty, I told Case, I begged him, get me Earth, Wind and Fire, E.L.O., Elton John, pay them what they want, I didn't care; it'd be worth it!
- Marty Kaplan: Buddy, you have to understand television. We can't just go after the kids. We gotta attract the older audience, too. And Georgia has a big following with them.
- Buddy Harwin: Listen, my fans...
- Phil: Your fans? Your fans think The Flintstones is heavy drama! They need someone to turn the set on for them because they don't know how towork the knobs yet!
- [Buddy and Phil scuffle, Marty intervenes]
- Marty Kaplan: Take a walk, Phil! Grab a cup of coffee. Hit on a script girl.
- Phil: [yelling to Buddy] Georgia O'Hanlon has more talent dead drunk than you'll have if you live to be ninety!
- Buddy Harwin: Hey, don't stop at the coffee machine! Keep going until you reach unemployment!
- Mark Case: Now, since I'm exiting the agency business, I should leave you with this observation: All the sincerity in Hollywood can be put into a gnat's navel with room left over for an agent's heart.
- Dina Moran: In your series, you play a blind detective who uses disguises to catch the villain?
- Terry Anderson: That's right.
- Dina Moran: Now I don't quite understand the premise. If you're blind, how can you see the disguises you put on?
- Terry Anderson: Yeah, well, that's the writers' job, and I'll tell ya they haven't been coming up with much lately. That's why the ratings have been slipping. Television writers are overpaid, under-talented, and the most pampered people in the business!