Orson Welles Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Orson Welles

Orson Welles Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Orson Welles quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

The basic and essential human is the woman. — Orson Welles

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

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

Friendship creates only the illusion of not being alone. — Orson Welles

It was great to watch Orson Welles, not only as an actor but as a director. — Max Von Sydow

Orson Welles was lazy. He was a late bloomer. — Xavier Dolan

I was watching Orson Welles and Jean Vigo films at a ridiculously young age. — Brady Corbet

Cinema as a means of expression fascinates me. — Orson Welles

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

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. — Orson Welles

I don't pray because I don't want to bore God. — Orson Welles

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

Hollywood expects you to experiment but on a film that makes money and if you don't make money, you're to blame. Your job is to make money. — Orson Welles

I started at the top and worked my way down. — Orson Welles

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

Everything bad that has ever happened to me has been caused by agents or lawyers. — Orson Welles

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

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

I never said I was a genius. — Orson Welles

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

I have no great message to the world. — Orson Welles

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful. — Orson Welles

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

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

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

By nature, I am an experimentalist. I don't believe much in accomplishment. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

I am essentially a hack, a commercial person. If I had a hobby, I would immediately make money on it or abandon it. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

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. — Orson Welles

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

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. — Orson Welles

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

Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying. — Dorothy Parker

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

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. — Orson Welles

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society. — Orson Welles

I'm a lurid character! — Orson Welles

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

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

A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens. — Orson Welles

I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it. — Harold Prince

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

[On Orson Welles:] When I talk to him, I feel like a plant that's been watered. — Marlene Dietrich

There are a thousand ways of playing a good classic. If it were effective, I would play Hamlet on a trapeze. — Orson Welles

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

There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present. — Orson Welles

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

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

Clarence Darrow was a unique and courageous man. Several of my favourite actors have played Darrow ... Henry Fonda, Orson Welles and Spencer Tracy. — Kevin Spacey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only a certain breed of actor should ever even try to work for Orson Welles. I'm glad I'm one of that breed. — Mercedes McCambridge

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

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

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

I am the only actor who ever had to lose weight to play Orson Welles. — Christian McKay

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. — Orson Welles

The trouble with a movie is that it's old before it's released. It's no accident that it comes in a can. — Orson Welles

If I could steal someone's dream myself, I'd have to go for one of Orson Welles. — Christopher Nolan

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

Forget Orson Welles, and heed Walt Whitman: "I am large, I contain multitudes."5 — Ed Yong

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

Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention. — Orson Welles

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

[Orson Welles] was a man who made the greatest film ever made and was never forgiven for it. — Roger Ebert

Orson Welles, who said to Anita Bryant, Stop picketing me. What I said was I was a thespian. Never got a dinner! — Red Buttons

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

I would rather be on the set than doing anything. — Orson Welles

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre. — Orson Welles

I don't like television when it gets near to photographed plays. — Orson Welles

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. — Orson Welles

We will sell no wine before its time. — Orson Welles

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. — Orson Welles

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

I can't work in a sewer. I come from California. — Orson Welles

Fake is as old as the Eden tree. — Orson Welles