Welles Quotes & Sayings

Take myself as a good-will ambassador. I'm great - I'm taking myself as a character - for the intellectuals and the man on the street. I'm great where Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. leaves off. I'm
not so good with high society, in either North or South America, because I'm highly unconventional. Perhaps I bewilder people by being at once the esthete, the intellectual and the
vulgarian. — 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

Hollywood is Hollywood. There's nothing you can say about it that isn't true, good or bad. And if you get into it, you have no right to be bitter - you're the one who sat down, and joined the game. — Orson Welles

My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw - which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them. — Nigel Rees

Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. — Tom Shales

The most personal thing I've put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It's better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power. — 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

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

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

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

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

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine. — 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

There's a para-phrase about Orson Welles saying: "Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else." I've been very lucky ... before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all. — Colin Firth

We should not have our children going to school to learn how to become obese. — Jeanne Kohl-Welles

Exactly, I repeated myself. I believe we do it all the time. We always take up certain elements again. How can it be avoided? An actor's voice always has the same timbre and, consequently, he repeats himself. It is the same for a singer, a painter ... There are always certain things that come back, for they are part of one's personality, of one's style. If these things didn't come into play, a personality would be so complex that it would become impossible to identify it.
It is not my intention to repeat myself, but in my work there should certainly be references to what I have done in the past. Say what you will, but The Trial is the best film I ever made ... I have never been so happy as when I made this film.
(talking about directing, The Trial (1962) - from Orson Welles: Interviews (book)) — Orson Welles

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

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

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

I must be sincere towards what I am ... Experimenting is the only thing that fills me with enthusiasm ... It is the only sphere where I feel really honest and sincere. — Orson Welles

The director is the most overrated artist in the world. He is the only artist who, with no talent whatsoever, can be a success for 50 years without his lack of talent ever being discovered. — 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

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention. — 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

Even if I'd stayed [in the US to finish 'The Magnificent Ambersons'] I would've had to make compromises on the editing, but these would've been mine and not the fruit of confused and often semi-hysterical committees. If I had been there myself I would have found my own solutions and saved the pictures in a form which would have carried the stamp of my own effort. — Orson Welles

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

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

I've always tried to learn from the greats: Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Ghandi, Buddha, Jesus ... it's just that there's this tremendous pressure to correct all the things they got wrong. — Zach Braff

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

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

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

In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn't stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night. — Orson Welles

I have wasted the greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paintbox, which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It's about two percent moviemaking and ninety-eight percent hustling It's no way to spend a life. — Orson Welles

I'm never certain of a performance - my own or the other actors' - or the script or anything ... But to me it seems there's only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

Orson Welles lists Citizen Kane as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for Shadow of a Doubt, and Sir Carol Reed chose The Third Man - and I'm in all of them. — Joseph Cotten

The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents. — Orson Welles

I discovered Orson Welles in college; my freshman English professor screened 'Citizen Kane' for us, and I wound up writing a 20-page term paper on it. — Claire Danes

I hate women, hate them generally, not in particular but in an abstract way. I hate them because one never really learns anything about them. They are inscrutable. — 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

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

Each multiplex has screens allocated to each studio. The screens need filling. Studios have to create product to fill their screen, and the amount of good product is limited. — Orson Welles

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

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. — 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

Irwin F. Gellman's Secret Affairs: FDR, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles, — Larry Kramer

Like so many people, I only remembered Orson Welles as this huge, fat, bearded figure selling wine in TV commercials. So whenever anyone said I looked like Orson Welles I said that I wasn't that fat, and I would get on a diet, quickly. — Christian McKay

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Lynn is one of the last actors Orsen Welles used in a production. It was wonderful. He's very sharp, very sharp. It's funny I've been asked how weird it was to have a Brit do a church gospel movie. — Cuba Gooding Jr.

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

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

I have an unfortunate personality. — Orson Welles

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

I don't take art as seriously as politics. — Orson Welles

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

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

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

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

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre. — 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

I'm a lurid character! — 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 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

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

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

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

Mum worked as a secretary for Orson Welles for what sounded like a very miserable year. Her brother was the actor Jeremy Brett, who became famous for playing Sherlock Holmes. He was an absolutely lovely man. Very exciting and glamorous, he'd always make me feel amazing and full of confidence, like I'd picked the right thing to do in life. — Martin Clunes

The word genius was whispered into my ear the first things I ever Heard while I was still mewling in my crib, laughs Orson (Welles), so it never occured to me that I wasn't until middle age — Barbara Leaming

I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality. — Spencer Tracy

[The movies] make the sort of comment only a novel can make, an allusion to the world in which people live, the psychological and economic motivations, the influences of the period in which they lived. — Orson Welles

I'm extremely surprised to learn that a story, which has become familiar to children through the medium of comic strips and many succeeding novels and adventure stories, should have had such an immediate and profound effect upon radio listeners. — Orson Welles

A maverick may go his own way but he doesn't think that it's the only way or ever claim that it's the best one, except maybe for himself. And don't imagine that this raggle-taggle gypsy is claiming to be free. It's just that some of the necessities to which I am a slave are different from yours. — Orson Welles

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

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

Anyone who believes he has caught him in a fantastic lie is apt to find out that the fantastic story is the truth. And some unimportant statement, like just having bought an evening paper a half-hour ago, is the lie."

--On Orson Welles — Bernard Herrmann

I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies ... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows. — Orson Welles

This crowd did not diminish through the whole of that cold, wet day; they seemed not to know what was to by their fate since their great benefactor was dead, and though strong and brave men wept when I met them. — Gideon Welles

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

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

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

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

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he's a marvelous man. — Vincente Minnelli

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