Orson Welles Quotes

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.

The first thing one must remember about film is that it is a young medium. And it is essential for every responsible artist to cultivate the ground that has been left fallow.

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

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.

A man is not from where he is born, but where he chooses to die.

Criticism is the essence of creation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I have an unfortunate personality.

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.

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

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

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

Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen, and contented movies stars. I am none of these things.

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.

The word genius was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard, while I was still mewling in my crib. So it never occurred to me that I wasn't until middle age.

On my tombstone, I want written: 'He never did 'Love Boat!''

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

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.

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

The director is simply the audience. His job is to preside over accidents.

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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