Orson Welles Biography
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Orson Welles Famous Quotes

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

~ Orson Welles

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.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

~ Orson Welles

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.

~ Orson Welles

I have an unfortunate personality.

~ Orson Welles

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.

~ 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 started at the top and worked my way down.

~ Orson Welles

I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

~ Orson Welles

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 soc

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ 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

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.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

~ Orson Welles

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

~ 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

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

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

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.

~ Orson Welles

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

~ Orson Welles

Orson Welles Biography

Orson Welles Famous Quotes