Orson Welles Quotes (66 Quotes)

I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.

Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.

Rosebud.

The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God's plan. Everybody thinks that if they don't get it, they're some kind of odd man out. And it's not true. Nobody gets justice people just get good luck or bad luck.

I hate television. I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can not stop eating peanuts.

I hate it when people pray on the screen. It's not because I hate praying, but whenever I see an actor fold his hands and look up in the spotlight, I'm lost. There's only one other thing in the movies I hate as much, and that's sex. You just can't get in bed or pray to God and convince me on the screen.

as close to a genius as anyone I have ever met.

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Faces in color tend to look like meat, veal, beef, bologna

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I would just like to mention Robert Houdin who in the eighteenth century invented the vanishing birdcage trick and the theater matinee - may he rot and perish. Good afternoon.

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.

The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.

The word genius was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard, while I was still mewling in my crib. So it never occurred to me that I wasn't until middle age.

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.

Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad, except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.

Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.

At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.

I don't say that we ought to all misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

Keep Ted Turner and his goddamned Crayolas away from my movies

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

The director is simply the audience. . . . His job is to preside over accidents.

The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.

I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.

I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.

In the theater there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time - in the cinema, only one

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.

They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

The title is so good, you don't have to make the movie just release the title.

Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else.

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.