All About Eve Quotes

Margo Channing: Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson: Looks like I'm going to have a very fancy party...
Margo Channing: I thought you were going to be late.
Bill Sampson: When I'm guest of honor?
Margo Channing: I had no idea you were even here.
Bill Sampson: I ran into Eve on my way upstairs; she told me you were dressing.
Margo Channing: That never stopped you before.
Bill Sampson: Well, we started talking, she wanted to know all about Hollywood, she seemed so interested...
Margo Channing: She's a girl of so many interests.
Bill Sampson: It's a pretty rare quality these days.
Margo Channing: She's a girl of so many rare qualities.
Bill Sampson: So she seems.
Margo Channing: So you've pointed out, so often. So many qualities, so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection - and so young. So young and so fair...

Movie: All About Eve
Eve Harrington: I will regard this great honor not so much as an award for what I have achieved, but a standard to hold against what I have yet to accomplish.

Movie: All About Eve
Lloyd Richards: The atmosphere is very MacBeth-ish... what has, or is about to, happen?

Movie: All About Eve
Llyod Richards: You knew when you came in that the audition was over, that Eve was your understudy, playing that childish little game of cat and mouse.
Margo Channing: Not mouse, never mouse. If anything *rat*!

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing: I distinctly remember, Addison, crossing you off of my guest list. What are you doing here?
Addison DeWitt: Dear Margo, you were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again soon. You remember Miss Caswell.
Margo Channing: I do not. How do you do?
Claudia Caswell: We've never met. Maybe that's why?
Addison DeWitt: Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana School of the Dramatic Arts. [Eve enters]
Addison DeWitt: Ah Eve.
Eve Harrington: Good evening Mr. DeWitt.
Margo Channing: I'd no idea you two knew each other.
Addison DeWitt: This must be at long last our formal introduction. Until now we've only met in passing.
Claudia Caswell: That's how you met me... in passing.
Margo Channing: Eve, this is an old friend of Mr. DeWitt's mother. Miss Caswell, Miss Harrington.
Eve Harrington: Miss Caswell.
Claudia Caswell: How do you do?
Margo Channing: Addison, I've been waiting for you to meet Eve for the longest time.
Addison DeWitt: It could only have been your natural timidity that kept you from mentioning it.
Margo Channing: You've heard of her great interest in the theater.
Addison DeWitt: We have that in common.
Margo Channing: Then you two must have a long talk.
Eve Harrington: I'm afraid Mr. DeWitt would find me boring.
Claudia Caswell: You won't bore him long, you won't get a chance to talk.
Addison DeWitt: Claudia, come

Movie: All About Eve
Eve Harrington : If nothing else, there's applause... like waves of love pouring over the footlights.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.

Movie: All About Eve
Birdie : What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : What do you take me for?
Eve Harrington : I don't know that I'd take you for anything.
Addison DeWitt : Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?
Eve Harrington : I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison, but I don't know what?
Addison DeWitt : Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.
Eve Harrington : I never intended you to be.
Addison DeWitt : Yes you did, and you still do.
Eve Harrington : I still don't know what you're getting at, but right now I want to take my nap. It's important...
Addison DeWitt : It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.
Eve Harrington : Champion to champion.
Addison DeWitt : Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.
Eve Harrington : Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take my nap?
Addison DeWitt : Very well - plainly and distinctly - though I consider it unnecessary because you know as well as I do what I'm going to say: Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.
Eve Harrington : What do you mean by that?
Addison DeWitt : More plainly and more distinctly: I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I have come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd, or anyone else for that matter, because I will not permit it.
Eve Harrington : What have you got to do with it?
Addison DeWitt : Everything, bec

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : I'm Addison DeWitt. I'm nobody's fool, least of all yours.

Movie: All About Eve
[ a butler passes by ]
Miss Claudia Caswell : Oh, waiter!
Addison DeWitt : That is not a waiter, my dear, that is a butler.
Miss Claudia Caswell : Well, I can't yell "Oh butler!" can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler.
Addison DeWitt : You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.
Miss Claudia Caswell : I don't want to make trouble. All I want is a drink.
Max Fabian : Leave it to me. I'll get you one.
Miss Claudia Caswell : Thank you, Mr. Fabian.
Addison DeWitt : Well done! I can see your career rise in the east like the sun.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent!

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.

Movie: All About Eve
Lloyd Richards : How about calling it a night?
Margo Channing : And you, pose as a playwright? A situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is everybody go to sleep.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : [ voiceover ] Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson : Have you no human consideration?
Margo Channing : Show me a human, and I might have!

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Heartburn? It's that Miss Caswell. I don't see why she hasn't given Addison heartburn.
Bill Sampson : No heart to burn!
Margo Channing : Everybody has a heart - except some people.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : I detest cheap sentiment.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : Too bad, we're gonna miss the third act. They're gonna play it offstage.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : While you wait you can read my column. It'll make minutes fly like hours.

Movie: All About Eve
Lloyd Richards : A Hollywood movie star just arrived.
Margo Channing : Shucks, and I sent my autograph book to the cleaner.

Movie: All About Eve
Eve Harrington : I will regard this great honor not so much as an award for what I have achieved, but a standard to hold against what I have yet to accomplish.

Movie: All About Eve
Lloyd Richards : That bitter cynicism of yours is something you've acquired since you left Radcliffe!
Karen Richards : The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson : We have to go to City Hall for the marriage license and blood test.
Margo Channing : I'd marry you if it turned out you had no blood at all.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that in itself is probably the reason: You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also our contempt for humanity and inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.

Movie: All About Eve
Birdie : The bed looks like a dead animal act.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theater. In it I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theatre.

Movie: All About Eve