Best 146 quotes of Orson Welles on MyQuotes

Orson Welles

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

    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.

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

    An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.

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    Orson Welles

    Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

    As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I've never heard one say, 'No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.' They will always say, 'You don't like him? I've got somebody else.' They're totally spineless.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

    Cinema as a means of expression fascinates me.

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    Orson Welles

    Computers combine things to make new knowledge at such high speed that we cannot absorb it.

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    Orson Welles

    Crooks aren't the worst people, just the stupidest. The fleas of the world.

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

    Criticism is the essence of creation.

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

    Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

    Gluttony is not a secret vice.

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    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?

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    Orson Welles

    Hollywood expects you to experiment but on a film that makes money and if you don't make money, you're to blame. Your job is to make money.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    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.

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

    I'd make my promises now if I wasn't so busy arranging to keep them.

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    Orson Welles

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

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    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.

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    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.

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    Orson Welles

    I drag my myth around with me.