Citizen Kane (1941)

Joseph Cotten: Jedediah Leland, Screening Room Reporter

Photos 

Quotes 

• Jedediah Leland : I can remember everything. That's my curse, young man. It's the greatest curse that's ever been inflicted on the human race: memory.

• Jedediah Leland : That's all he ever wanted out of life... was love. That's the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn't have any to give.

• Jedediah Leland : You don't care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules.

• Kane : Hello, Jedediah.

  Jedediah Leland : Hello, Charlie. I didn't know we were speaking...

  Kane : Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah: you're fired.

• Mr. Bernstein : [on Kane finishing Leland's critical review of Susan's opera singing]  Everybody knows that story, Mr. Leland. But why did he do it? How could a man write a notice like that?

  Jedediah Leland : You just don't know Charlie. He thought that by finishing that notice he could show me he was an honest man. He was always trying to prove something. The whole thing about Susie being an opera singer, that was trying to prove something. You know what the headline was the day before the election, "Candidate Kane found in love nest with quote, singer, unquote." He was gonna take the quotes off the singer.

• Kane : Are we going to declare war on Spain, or are we not?

  Jedediah Leland : The Inquirer already has.

  Kane : [jokingly]  You long-faced, overdressed anarchist!

  Jedediah Leland : I am *not* overdressed!

  Kane : You are too! Mr. Bernstein, look at his necktie!

• Jedediah Leland : [about Kane's "Declaration of Principles"]  I'd like to keep that particular piece of paper myself. I have a hunch it might turn out to be something pretty important. A document...

  Mr. Bernstein : Sure!

  Jedediah Leland : ...like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and my first report card at school.

• Mr. Bernstein : Isn't it wonderful? Such a party.

  Jedediah Leland : Yeah.

  Mr. Bernstein : What's the matter?

  Jedediah Leland : Bernstein, these men who are now with the Inquirer, who were with the Chronicle until yesterday...

  [Jedediah pauses] 

  Jedediah Leland : Bernstein, Bernstein, these men who were with the Chronicle, weren't they just as devoted to the Chronicle policies as they are now to our policies?

  Mr. Bernstein : Sure they are just like anybody else. They got work to do, they do it. Only they happen to be the best men in the business.

  Jedediah Leland : Do we stand for the same things the Chronicle stands for, Mr. Bernstein?

  Mr. Bernstein : Certainly not. Listen, Mr. Kane will change them to his kind of newspapermen in a week.

  Jedediah Leland : There's always a chance, of course, that they will change Mr. Kane without his knowing it.

• Jedediah Leland : You still eating?

  Kane : I'm still hungry.

• Jedediah Leland : Bernstein, am I a stuffed shirt? Am I a horse-faced hypocrite? Am I a New England school marm?

  Mr. Bernstein : Yes. If you thought I'd answer you any differently than what Mr. Kane tells you...

• Jedediah Leland : I suppose he had a private sort of greatness, but he kept it to himself.

• Jedediah Leland : [about Charles Kane]  I suppose he had some private sort of greatness. But he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip.

• Jedediah Leland : Not that Charlie was ever brutal. He just did brutal things. Maybe I wasn't his friend, but if I wasn't, he never had one.