- Vicki Lester: He's in a sanitarium. He really wants to stop drinking, Oliver. He's trying very hard. I know he is. What is it? What is it that makes him want to destroy himself? You've known him longer than anyone else. Tell me what it is. Please. I don't care but just tell me.
- Oliver Niles: Don't you think I've tried through the years to know why, to help him? I don't know, Esther. I don't know what the answer is.
- Vicki Lester: Well, I've got to find the answer. You don't know what it's like to watch somebody you love just crumble away bit by bit and day by day in front of your eyes and stand there helpless. Love isn't enough. I thought it was. I thought I was the answer for Norman. But love isn't enough for him. And I'm afraid of what's beginning to happen within me... because... sometimes I hate him. I hate his promises to stop and then the watching and waiting to see it begin again. I hate to go home to him at night and listen to his lies. My heart goes out to him because he tries - he does try. But I hate him for failing. I hate me, too. I hate me cause I've failed, too. I have. I don't know what's going to happen to us, Oliver. No matter how much you love somebody... how do you live out the days?
- Norman Maine: Do you ever go fishing?
- [Esther looks confused]
- Norman Maine: Well, do you like prizefi--have you ever watched a great fighter?
- Esther Blodgett: I-I uh--
- Norman Maine: I'm trying to tell you how you sing.
- Esther Blodgett: Do you mean like a prizefighter or a fish?
- Norman Maine: Look...em--
- [leads her into a kitchen]
- Norman Maine: There are certain pleasures that you get--
- [realizes that the sound of clanging dishes is intolerable and they depart for the outside]
- Norman Maine: There are certain pleasures you get, little-little jabs of pleasure when a swordfish take a hook, or-or when you see a great fighter get in right for the kill, see?
- [Esther still looks confused]
- Norman Maine: You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?
- Esther Blodgett: No, not yet. Why don't you try bullfights?
- Matt Libby: [after being introduced to Esther] Esther Blodgett? Well, we'll do something about that. Anyway, nice to have you with us.
- Vicki Lester: [Norman has finished looking through her scrapbook] You know as much about me as I do myself. But... you see how long it's taken me to get this far. Now, all I need is just a little luck.
- Norman Maine: What kind of luck?
- Vicki Lester: Oh, the kind of luck that every girl singer with a band dreams of - one night a big talent scout from a big record company might come in and he'll let me make a record.
- Norman Maine: Yes, and then?
- Vicki Lester: Well, the record will become number one on the Hit Parade, it'll be played on the jukeboxes all over the country... and I'll be made
- [laughs self-deprecatingly at the implausibility]
- Vicki Lester: End of dream.
- Norman Maine: There's only one thing wrong with that.
- Vicki Lester: I know - it won't happen!
- Norman Maine: No, it might happen pretty easily - but the dream isn't big enough.
- Oliver Niles: You know Libby you missed a lot not knowing Norman Maine.
- Matt Libby: Not knowing him? I spent my life knowing him. I knew what he was going to do before he did it. I knew him backwards.
- Oliver Niles: You didn't know him at all. He was quite a guy.
- Vicki Lester: [Norman has returned to find her in a nightclub. She walks over to him with a small laugh] Hello, Mr. Maine. You turn up in the strangest places.
- Norman Maine: Don't I now?
- Vicki Lester: [stops laughing, suddenly shocked] And you're cold sober.
- Norman Maine: Well, you'd better make the most of it!