Harry Brock: Shut up! You ain't gonna be tellin' nobody nothin' pretty soon!
Billie Dawn: DOUBLE NEGATIVE! Right?
Paul Verrall: Right.


--William Holden (as Paul Verrall) in Born Yesterday

Joe Bonaparte: Poppa, I've come home.


--William Holden (as Joe Bonaparte) in Golden Boy

Billie Dawn: Could have saved yourself the trouble. I don't read papers.
Paul Verrall: Never?
Billie Dawn: Yeah, once in a while the back part... the funnies.
Paul Verrall: I think you should. The, the front part... the not-so-funnies.


--William Holden (as Paul Verrall) in Born Yesterday

Billie Dawn: How about the story of your life?
Paul Verrall: Oh no. Much too long... and mostly untrue.


--William Holden (as Paul Verrall) in Born Yesterday

[Norma threatens suicide again]
Joe Gillis: Oh, wake up, Norma, you'd be killing yourself to an empty house. The audience left twenty years ago.


--William Holden (as Joe Gillis) in Sunset Boulevard

Shears: I'd say the odds against a successful escape are about 100 to one. But may I add another word, Colonel? The odds against survival in this camp are even worse.


--William Holden (as Shears) in The Bridge on the River Kwai

Shears: You give me powders, pills, baths, injections, enemas; when all I need is love.


--William Holden (as Shears) in The Bridge on the River Kwai

Shears: You make me sick with your heroics! There's a stench of death about you. You carry it in your pack like the plague. Explosives and L-pills - they go well together, don't they? And with you it's just one thing or the other: destroy a bridge or destroy yourself. This is just a game, this war! You and Colonel Nicholson, you're two of a kind, crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman... how to die by the rules - when the only important thing is how to live like a human being.


--William Holden (as Shears) in The Bridge on the River Kwai