Orson Welles Quotes & Sayings

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

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head. — Orson Welles

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

You [film critics] always overstress the value of images. You judge films in the first place by their visual impact instead of looking for content. This is a great disservice to the cinema. It is like judging a novel only by the quality of its prose. I was guilty of the same sin when I first started writing for the cinema ... Now I feel that only the literary mind can help the movies out of that cul de sac into which they have been driven by mere technicians and artificers. — Orson Welles

We will sell no wine before its time. — 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

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

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

You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that changed from one thing to another. The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen. — Orson Welles

I seem to have no dress sense at all. I'm always being listed in New York among one of the ten worst dressed men of the year. Someone once described me as "looking like an unmade bed." He was right! — Orson Welles

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

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

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

When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't. — Orson Welles

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

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

In attempting to explain F For Fake's state-side failure, it has occurred to me that perhaps the subject matter was at least partially to blame, and that this country is so blissfully enslaved by the notion of the special sanctity of the expert that an overtly anti-expert film was bound to go too much against the national grain. — Orson Welles

In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, 'cause it was lawless. A man's word had to mean something. — Orson Welles

Human nature is eternal; therefore one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end. — Orson Welles

That doesn't make any sense. Sorry. There's no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin a sentence with "in" and emphasize it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say
"In July" and I'll go down on you. That's just idiotic, if you'll forgive me for saying so. It's just stupid ... "In July"; I'd love to know how you emphasize "In" in "In July". Impossible!
Meaningless! — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't want any description of me to be accurate; I want it to be flattering. I don't think people who have to sing for their supper ever like to be described truthfully - not in print anyway. We need to sell tickets, so we need good reviews. — Orson Welles

I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child, because everybody told me, from the moment I was able to hear, that I was absolutely marvelous, and I never heard a discouraging word for years, you see. I didn't know what was ahead of me. — Orson Welles

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age. — 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 think any word can explain a man's life. — Orson Welles

If you've noticed that I don't use long takes, it's not because I don't like them, but because no one gives me the necessary means to treat myself to them. It's more economical to make one image, then this image and then that image, and try to control them later, in the editing studio. — Orson Welles

On my tombstone, I want written, 'He never did 'Love Boat! — Orson Welles

If I want to pursue the art of painting - or music or writing or sculpture - it requires only my time and a few dollars for materials. If, however, I want to produce a motion picture I have to go out and raise a million dollars! — Orson Welles

I think I made essential a mistake in staying in movies, because I - but it's a mistake I can't regret, because it's like saying, 'I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman, but I did because I love her.' — Orson Welles

I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we're doing is trying to brighten up the place. That's why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers - because males have got to try and justify their existence. — Orson Welles

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. — Orson Welles

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

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. — Orson Welles

I have an unfortunate personality. — Orson Welles

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

It would be so much better if the critics would come, not on first nights, but on last nights, when they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you're guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it - how can you get rid of a real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it. — Orson Welles

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

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. — Orson Welles

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

The people who've done well within the [Hollywood] system are the people whose instincts, whose desires [are in natural alignement with those of the producers] - who want to make the kind of movies that producers want to produce. People who don't succeed - people who've had long, bad times; like [Jean] Renoir, for example, who I think was the best director, ever - are the people who didn't want to make the kind of pictures that producers want to make. Producers didn't want to make a Renoir picture, even if it was a success. — Orson Welles

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck. — Orson Welles

Women are another race. They are always changing, like the moon. You can only win by being the cool center of their being. You have to represent something solid and loving. The anchor. Even if you are not. You can't tell them the truth. You have to lie and play games. I've never in my entire life been with someone with whom I didn't have to play a game. I've never been with anyone with whom I could be exactly who I am. — 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

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

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

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. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

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. — Orson Welles

I know people who have a much better recollection of their childhood than I do. They remember very well when they were a year and a half and two years old. I've only one or two daguerreotypes that come to mind. — 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

[I have a] fondness for telling stories, like the Arab storytellers on the marketplace ... I will never grow tired of [telling] stories [and] I make the mistake of thinking that everyone has the same enthusiasm! — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

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

There were centuries when civilization had no theater. — Orson Welles

One should make movies innocently - the way Adam and Eve named the animals, their first day in the garden ... Learn from your own interior vision of things, as if there had never been a D.W.Griffith, or a Eisenstein, or a [John] Ford, or a [Jean] Renoir, or anybody. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time. — Orson Welles

See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I'm profoundly convinced that that's a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks. — Orson Welles

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

A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves. — Orson Welles

Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you? — 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

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

I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world. — Orson Welles

I dont believe in learning from other peoples 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

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

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

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

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

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. — Orson Welles

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it - yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don't give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by. — Orson Welles

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

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