[first lines]
Charles Foster Kane:
Rosebud...


Female reporter:
If you could've found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would've explained everything.
Thompson:
No, I don't think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.


Charles Foster Kane:
You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.
Thatcher:
Don't you think you are?
Charles Foster Kane:
I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
Thatcher:
What would you like to have been?
Charles Foster Kane:
Everything you hate.


Charles Foster Kane:
Hello Jedediah.
Leland:
Hello, Charlie. I didn't know we were speaking...
Charles Foster Kane:
Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah: you're fired.


Charles Foster Kane:
I always gagged on the silver spoon.


[Quoting from Kane's letter]
Walter Parks Thatcher:
I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.


Bernstein:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Switzerland... he was thrown out of a lot of colleges.


Emily:
Really Charles, people will think-...
Charles Foster Kane:
- -what I tell them to think.


Bernstein:
President's niece, huh? Before Mr. Kane's through with her, she'll be a president's wife.


Bernstein:
There's a lot of statues in Europe you haven't bought yet.
Charles Foster Kane:
You can't blame me. They've been making statues for some two thousand years, and I've only been collecting for five.


Bernstein:
We never lost as much as we made.


Charles Foster Kane:
The news goes on for 24 hours a day.