Citizen Kane/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Susan Alexander Kane gets the quietest and best one in the whole movie:

Susan: Oh. So it's you that this is being done to. I can't do this to you? Oh yes I can.

  • The younger Kane gets a great one too when confronted by Thatcher over his newspaper's campaign against a transit company.

Thatcher: Charles, I came here to see you about this campaign of yours. This Enquirer campaign against the Public Transit Company.
Kane: Mr. Thatcher, do you know anything we can use against them?
Thatcher: Charles, I think I should remind you of a fact you seem to have forgotten: that you yourself are one of the largest individual shareholders in the Public Transit Company!
Kane: Trouble is, you don't realize you're talking to two people here. As Charles Foster Kane, who owns 82,364 shares of Public Transit preferred--you see, I do have a general idea of my holdings-- I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of $1000.
Thatcher: My time is too valuable for me-
Kane: On the other hand, I am the publisher of The Inquirer. As such, it is my duty - I'll let you in on a little secret, it is also my pleasure - to see to it that decent, hard working people of this city are not robbed blind by a group of money-mad pirates because, God help them, they have no one to look after their interests! I'll let you in on another little secret, Mr. Thatcher. I think I'm the man to do it. You see, I have money and property. If I don't defend the interests of the underprivileged, somebody else will - maybe somebody without any money or any property, and that would be too bad.
Thatcher: Yes, yes, yes, money and property. Well, I happened to see your financial statement today, Charles. Now tell me honestly, my boy, don't you think it's rather unwise for you to continue this philanthropic enterprise? This Inquirer - that is costing you one million dollars a year?
Kane: You're right. We did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... sixty years.