Orson Welles Quotes
29 quotations by Orson Welles
They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies. |
The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism. |
The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it. |
The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful. |
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. |
Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me. |
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. |
Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest. |
Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck. |
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. |
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. |
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. |
I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. |
I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. |
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. |
I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts. |
I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could. |
I don't say that we ought to all misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could. |
I don't pray because I don't want to bore God. |
Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation. |
Gluttony is not a secret vice. |
Fake is as old as the Eden tree. |
Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one! |
Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him. |
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. |
At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable. |
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. |
A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong. |
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. |