Sunset Boulevard

"I'm hanging on by my fingernails, and they're breaking off one by one."

"You can't love someone who sees you as an investment."

"The script pages are blank, but my bills are very real."

"I compromised once, then again, then a thousand times. Now I don't know who I am anymore."

"Hollywood is full of beautiful lies and ugly truths."

"She wanted to own me. I was too weak to resist."

"Every day you stay in this town, you become less of what you were."

"I should have taken a job pumping gas back in Dayton."

"The illusion is all they're selling. The dream is just the bait."

"In this business, you're either predator or prey. I was never predatory enough."

"I've been living off her kindness, and it's slowly killing me."

"They don't make stars anymore - they manufacture them."

"I lost my self-respect somewhere around my third script rewrite."

"Success here isn't about talent. It's about knowing the right people and making the right deals."

"She was beautiful in that dangerous way that destroys men."

"Writing for pictures is like painting by numbers - you follow the formula or you starve."

"I came to Hollywood to change the world. The world changed me instead."

"Nobody cares about you until you're useful to them."

"The price of dreams is usually paid in humiliation."

"I was a decent writer once. Before I became desperate."

"You can sell anything in this town if you package it right."

"Time moves differently here. Days feel like years when you're struggling."

"Love in Hollywood is just another transaction."

"I thought I was different. I thought I had integrity. I was wrong."

"In this town, you're only as good as your last picture."

"She promised me a new life. I should have known better."

"I'm not a gigolo. I'm a writer down on his luck."

"The system doesn't care about you - it cares about what you can produce."

"Every writer in this town thinks he's ten times better than he is."

"I used to believe in myself. That was my first mistake."