Orson Welles quotes
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Orson Welles Quotes



Quotes by Orson Welles - (45 quotes)

Orson Welles - From the Aging category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Ambition category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Artists category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Audience category:

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. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Commerce category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Critics category:

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Deception category:

Fake is as old as the Eden tree. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Deception category:

I drag my myth around with me. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Difficulty category:

You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Education category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Ego category:

I have an unfortunate personality. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Freedom category:

The greatest enemy of art is the absence of limitations. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Friendship category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Gender category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Genius category:

Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one! (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Goodness category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Health category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Immortality category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Influence category:

I don't believe in learning from other people's pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, innocently, as though there had never been anybody. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Insecurity category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Life category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Loneliness category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Materials category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Money category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Photography category:

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus. It is a medium via which messages reach us from another world. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Photography category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Politics category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Prayer category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Prosperity category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Prosperity category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Questions category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Quotations category:

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Religion category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Spectator category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Struggle category:

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Style category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Style category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Success category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Suffering category:

-Harry Lime in the film The Third Man, 1949...
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce...? The cuckoo clock. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Technology category:

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Time category:

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

Orson Welles - From the Travel category:

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Truth category:

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)

Orson Welles - From the Uniqueness category:

I passionately hate the idea of being 'with it.' An artist has always to be out of step with his time. (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles - From the Writing category:

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