All About Eve Quotes

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

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 here [ takes her aside ]
Addison DeWitt : . You see that man, that's Max Fabian, the producer. Now go do yourself some good.
Cla

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Birdie, you don't like Eve, do you?
Birdie : You looking for an answer or an argument?
Margo Channing : An answer.
Birdie : No.
Margo Channing : Why not?
Birdie : Now you want an argument.

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson : Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience, there's theatre.

Movie: All About Eve
Karen Richards : Nothing is forever in the Theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot and then its gone.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Lloyd, honey, be a playwright with guts. Write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.

Movie: All About Eve
Eve Harrington : I'll never forget this night as long as I live, and I'll never forget you for making it possible.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.
Bill Sampson : For instance what?
Margo Channing : For instance: you!

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited and thoughtless and messy.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : We all come into this world with our little egos equipped with individual horns. If we don't blow them, who else will?

Movie: All About Eve
Lloyd Richards : There are very few moments in life as good as this. Let's remember it. To each of us and all of us, never have we been more close, may we never be farther apart.

Movie: All About Eve
Eve Harrington : When you're a secretary in a brewery, it's pretty hard to make-believe you're anything else. Everything is beer.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : [ to Bill ] You be the host. It's your party. Happy birthday, welcome home, and we who are about to die salute you.

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
Bill Sampson : I don't agree, Addison.
Addison DeWitt : That happens to be your particular abnormality.

Movie: All About Eve
[ Margo is getting drunk at the party ]
Bill Sampson : Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?
Margo Channing : It hasn't been laid out, we haven't finished with the embalming. As a matter of fact, you're looking at it - the remains of Margo Channing, sitting up. It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.

Movie: All About Eve
Birdie : There's a message from the bartender. Does Miss Channing know she ordered domestic gin by mistake?
Margo Channing : The only thing I ordered by mistake is the guests. They're domestic, too, and they don't care what they drink as long as it burns!

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson : Real diamonds in a wig, the world we live in.

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : Is it possible, is it even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on?

Movie: All About Eve
Max Fabian : Let the rest of the world beat their brains out for a buck. It's friends that count. And I got friends.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Peace and quiet is for libraries!

Movie: All About Eve
Addison DeWitt : [ voiceover ] The minor awards, as you can see, have already been presented. Minor awards are for such as the writer and director, since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it. And no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : She thinks only of me, doesn't she?
Birdie : Well, let's say she thinks only about you, anyway.
Margo Channing : How do you mean that?
Birdie : I'll tell you how: like... like she's studying you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints - how you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep...
Margo Channing : I'm sure that's very flattering, Birdie. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it.

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson : [ to Eve ] "Don't let it worry you", said the camera man, "Even De Mille couldn't see anything looking through the wrong end!" So that was the first and last...
Margo Channing : [ entering ] Don't let me kill the point. Or isn't it a story for grownups?
Bill Sampson : You've heard it - about the time I looked into the wrong end of the camera finder.
Margo Channing : Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.
Eve Harrington : I'd like to hear it.
Margo Channing : Some snowy night, in front of the fire.

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson : We started talking - she wanted to know about Hollywood. She seemed so interested.
Margo Channing : She's a girl of so many interests.
Bill Sampson : Pretty rare quality these days.
Margo Channing : 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, and affection, and so young! So young and so fair!

Movie: All About Eve
Bill Sampson : This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to - I'm too mad.
Margo Channing : Guilty!
Bill Sampson : Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage and off. I love you for some of them, in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp - all right - but I will not have you sharpen them on me, or on Eve!
Margo Channing : What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
Bill Sampson : She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it! Eve Harrington has never, by word, look, thought, or suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me - it spells a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!
Margo Channing : Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Thank you, Eve. I'd like a martini, very dry.
Bill Sampson : I'll get it. [ to Eve ]
Bill Sampson : What'll you have?
Margo Channing : A milkshake?
Eve Harrington : A martini, very dry, please.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Addison, I've been wanting you to meet Eve for the longest time.
Addison DeWitt : It could only have been your natural timidity which 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 before too long.
Claudia Caswell : You won't bore him, honey - you won't even get a chance to talk.

Movie: All About Eve
Margo Channing : Margo Channing is ageless - spoken like a press agent.
Lloyd Richards : I know what I'm talking about. After all, they're my plays.
Margo Channing : Spoken like an author. Lloyd, I'm not twenty-ish, I'm not thirty-ish. Three months ago I was forty years old. Forty. Four O. That slipped out. I hadn't quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.

Movie: All About Eve
Karen Richards : A part in a play. You'd do all that just for a part in a play?
Eve Harrington : I'd do much more for a part that good.

Movie: All About Eve