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.