How do I save the current page title in a variable?

I want to save the current page title in a variable.

I have used the_title(); function but that will echo out the value when I want to rather save the current value of the_title(); function in a new variable.

Something along the lines of

$page_title = the_title();

That code above will still echo out the title when want it to just save the value inside the variable. How can I do that?