- Gregory Arkadin: And now I'm going to tell you about a scorpion. This scorpion wanted to cross a river, so he asked the frog to carry him. No, said the frog, no thank you. If I let you on my back you may sting me and the sting of the scorpion is death. Now, where, asked the scorpion, is the logic in that? For scorpions always try to be logical. If I sting you, you will die. I will drown. So, the frog was convinced and allowed the scorpion on his back. But, just in the middle of the river, he felt a terrible pain and realized that, after all, the scorpion had stung him. Logic! Cried the dying frog as he started under, bearing the scorpion down with him. There is no logic in this! I know, said the scorpion, but I can't help it - it's my character. Let's drink to character.
- Gregory Arkadin: I knew what I wanted. That's the difference between us. In this world there are those who give and those who ask. Those who do not care to give... those who do not dare to ask. You dared. But you were never quite sure what you were asking for.
- Gregory Arkadin: You're a fool. But, not a silly fool. And, I am not, ungenerous.
- Guy Van Stratten: Not, ungenerous? That means...
- Gregory Arkadin: Ten thousand dollars. Tax free, of course. You can have it in gold in Liechtenstein.
- Guy Van Stratten: Make it twenty thousand.
- Gregory Arkadin: You are a poor businessman, Van Stratten. You're bargaining before you know what's for sale.
- The Professor: Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else. Crooks aren't the worst people, they're just the stupidest. The fleas of the world.
- Guy Van Stratten: And murder?
- The Professor: My friend, after twenty thousand years, murder is still a business that's mainly in the hands of the amateurs.
- Baroness Nagel: It's true, that for a year or so, I did see a little something of that sort of thing. It wasn't as amusing as you might think.
- Gregory Arkadin: Criminals aren't ever very amusing.
- Baroness Nagel: Its because they're failures! Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.
- Gregory Arkadin: Here's to crime.
- Guy Van Stratten: Don't think I'm trying to embarrass you, Senora Martinez.
- Sophie: You don't do anything to me, Mr. Smarty.
- Woman in Apartment: Hey, Mister?
- Jakob Zouk: [Hears band playing Silent Night outside the Apartment] I ain't heard that piece in 14 years.
- Woman in Apartment: Get into bed!
- Jakob Zouk: That's something else I ain't heard in 14 years. Too late.
- Mily: Who is this man? You know we can't afford any trouble.
- Guy Van Stratten: Go get a doctor, quick!
- Bracco: Too late, for a doctor.
- Mily: What about the police?
- Bracco: Try to keep them away. I-I don't want to spend my last few minutes with a lot of cops.
- Mily: What gives with those crazy klu kluxers?
- Guy Van Stratten: They're Penitentes.
- Mily: Yeah, I know, but why are they dressed up like that for?
- Guy Van Stratten: They are doing penance. It means they're sorry for their sins.
- Mily: They must be awfully sorry.
- Gregory Arkadin: You are simply a fool. I will not ask you your price, because you have nothing to sell. But, still, I'll make you an offer. I am going to give you something to sell. And, then, I will pay you for it. Come on. You have tried to threaten me with a secret that does not exist. Now, I will make you a present of a real one. The great secret of my life.
- Gregory Arkadin: When did you talk to Van Stratton?
- Mily: [Drunkenly] It seems you were pretty chummy with some Nazi collaborators in Vichy.
- Gregory Arkadin: Have some champagne.
- Mily: They trusted you with all their money, those Nazis, who invested in South America for after the war. They didn't even ask for a receipt! Now their families can't even prove the money's theirs. And then, and then there's Mussolini. All those roads you built for the fascists in Ethiopia. Bad water. Not enough-enough food. Guy said more than a hundred of the men died. You know, you're kind of cute in a weird sort of a way. After a person gets over being scared of you. Why'd you grow that awful beard?
- Gregory Arkadin: To scare people with.
- Gregory Arkadin: I'm leaving tonight. Sell our Mexican pesos and buy Chilean. Remember what I said about copper. Oh, and get Chiquita a little present.
- Guy Van Stratten: Why would a man want to escape from Poland?
- The Professor: Because, the past few years, my country has offered its people a wide variety of incentives for moving elsewhere.
- Guy Van Stratten: I'm sorry but you're going to have to talk to me. We got to get out of here. Look, if we don't start moving, right away, you're going to be killed! I mean that, murdered.
- Jakob Zouk: I'm a dying man with no money. Somebody wants to kill me? He's wasting his time.
- Guy Van Stratten: No money? Well, you could use some dough, couldn't you. How would you like to earn 500 marks?
- Jakob Zouk: Earn?
- Guy Van Stratten: Or, even a thousand! We could go to my hotel. No, that's no good, he might find us. We can go to another hotel and I'll get you a fine room with a nice bed and lots of warm, big, thick, heavy blankets.
- Jakob Zouk: Oh, yeah? And who are you? Santa Claus?
- Guy Van Stratten: I am the one who's going to keep you from getting murdered. Oh, I know you, sir, you're an old jail bird, just out of stir, an ex-dope pusher, the world's forgotten you. I wouldn't give you a thought if I didn't have to. If my own life didn't depend on it.
- Guy Van Stratten: Well, you know me.
- Raina Arkadin: Do I?
- Guy Van Stratten: Maybe not yet, honey, but you're going to.
- Raina Arkadin: Ha-ha-ha.
- Guy Van Stratten: What's so comical?
- Raina Arkadin: I like your being tough, its just too bad you're such a corn ball.
- Guy Van Stratten: I did a lot of traveling and asked an awful lot of questions before I learned the truth. From Helsinki to Leopoldville. Brussels. Belgrade. Beirut. To Reno and Trieste. Marseilles...
- Mily: Some of the guns he sent to the Reds in China didn't even shoot.
- Gregory Arkadin: Is Van Stratton a communist?
- Mily: Are you kidding?
- Gregory Arkadin: Then, what's he complaining about?
- Guy Van Stratten: Oh, you don't want to talk. That's what Oscar said.
- Jakob Zouk: O-O-Oscar, he's a drug addict. He'll never be well.
- Guy Van Stratten: I almost made him well. I got him out in the water. Took away his needle.
- [Cut to new scene inside a sail boat]
- Oscar: I don't need to play my music for a pleasure cruise. Pleasure?
- [Shaking]
- Oscar: I don't know how long we've been out on this boat? For how many days I've been without?
- Guy Van Stratten: Without your heroin!
- Oscar: You didn't throw it away did you?
- Guy Van Stratten: You'll get your junk when you start to talk.
- Oscar: I won't talk. I won't tell you anything.
- [first lines]
- Orson Welles: [voice over] On December twenty-fifth, an aeroplane was sighted off the coast of Barcelona. It was flying empty. Investigation of this case reached into the highest circles, and the scandal was very nearly responsible for the fall of at least one European government. This motion picture is a fictionalized reconstruction of the events leading up to the appearance last Christmas morning of the empty plane.
- Guy Van Stratten: Like I say, I had no time for the cigarette smuggling, they confiscated my boat, I was broke. So, when I got out, I had nothing else to do but look around and ask questions. Well, Mily wasn't waiting for me at the prison gates, but, I traced her down... to a nightclub, where she was doing a bubble dance.
- [last lines]
- [Having just discovered she and Van Stratten's actions were responsible for her father's suicide, Raina is sitting behind the wheel of her car by herself when the Marquis approaches]
- Marquis of Rutleigh: What are you going to do now?
- Raina Arkadin: [stonefaced and quietly] Drive somewhere.
- Marquis of Rutleigh: [opening the driver's side door as Raina slides over to the passenger side as he gets in and closes the door] I'll do the driving.
- [the Marquis and Raina drive off together]