Orson Welles quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Orson Welles

Orson Welles Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Orson Welles on Wise Famous Quotes.

The basic and essential human is the woman.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

If I don't like somebody's looks, I don't like them.

Friendship creates only the illusion of not being alone.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Cinema as a means of expression fascinates me.

Working is part of life, I don't know how to distinguish between the two ... Work is an expression of life.

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

I love moving around from town to town. I never got on a train in my life without my spirits rising.

I don't think any word can explain a man's life.

I don't pray because I don't want to bore God.

The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer. When social or moral points are too heavily stressed, I always get uncomfortable.

In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.

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

I got that good a contract because I really didn't want to make a film.

I have no great message to the world.

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.

A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents.

The truth about any man can only be calculated by the sum of everything that has been said about him.

Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.

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

I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.

A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a director an army.

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

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.

Film is like a colony and there are very few colonists.

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

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

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.

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

A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows - his own.

What's happening now is what happened before, and often what's going to happen again sometime or other

I'm not basically a happy person, but I have all kinds of joy.

I'd make my promises now if I wasn't so busy arranging to keep them.

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

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

Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!

If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story - Orson Welles

People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.

Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It's the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore.

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

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

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.

Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen, and contented movies stars. I am none of these things.

I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.

I don't regard my career as something so precious that it comes before my convictions.

Make up an extra copy of that picture and send it to the Chronicle.

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

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.

The cinema has no boundary; it is a ribbon of dream.

Roosevelt used to say, You and I are the two best actors in America.

Computers combine things to make new knowledge at such high speed that we cannot absorb it.

If you want a happy ending, it just depends on where you close the book!

Almost all serious stories in the world are stories of failure with a death in it. But there is more lost paradise in them than defeat.

As for my style, for my vision of the cinema, editing is not simply one aspect; it's the aspect.

I drag my myth around with me.

Why spend 18 hours watching someone else's war, when you know how it comes out? We win, and then have to buy all their cars.

Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.

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

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

Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

I look back on my life and it's 95% running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5% actually making them. It's no way to live.

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

I never make my mind up about anything at all, until it's over and done with.

Don't give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.

'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.

You're beautful. Yes you are, you're very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful.

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

I love informality. I hate dressing up. I hate to be conventional - and I hate every kind of snob.

I discovered at the age of six that everything was a phony, worked with mirrors. Since then, I've always wanted to be a magician.

The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a conceit of the producer.

Husbands should revolt from time to time. Even the best circus-number becomes boring if the beast is too tame.

I would rather be on the set than doing anything.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn

If I had only one film in the world to save, it would be 'Grand Illusion.'

My definition of success is not having things thrown at me!

I much prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out.

I prefer the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.

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

The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate.

I don't pray really, because I don't want to bore God.

It isn't worth it. No money is worth this ... [walks out]

A movie in production is the greatest train set a boy could ever have.

I'm one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour - and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.

A movie studio is the best toy a boy ever had.

I've spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I'm not irresponsible.

I'm a lurid character!

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

There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women ...

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

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.