A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.
--Orson Welles
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what's for lunch.
--Orson Welles
Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.
--Orson Welles
Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.
--Orson Welles
Gluttony is not a secret vice.
--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
I don't regard my career as something so precious that it comes before my convictions.
--Orson Welles
I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
--Orson Welles
I don't take art as seriously as politics.
--Orson Welles
I don't think history can possibly be true. We all know people who get thinks written about them and they're lies.
--Orson Welles
I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
--Orson Welles
I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.
--Orson Welles
I have the terrible feeling that, because I have a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theater, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.
(spoken by Orson Welles in the film Someone to Love.).
--Henry Jaglom
I passionately hate the idea of being 'with it.' I think an artist is always out of step with his time. He has to be.
--Orson Welles
I started at the top and worked down.
--Orson Welles
I think man is a crazy animal. I think we're also marvelous people, divine in our potentialities.
--Orson Welles
I'm suspicious about philosophy; I have a real philistine doubt about its worth.
--Orson Welles
If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.
--Orson Welles
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
(spoken by Orson Welles in the film The Third Man).
--Orson Welles
It's about two percent movie-making and ninety-eight percent hustling. It's no way to spend a life.
--Orson Welles
Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad, except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.
--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
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
--Orson Welles
Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
--Orson Welles
Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of.
--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
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.
--Orson Welles
There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.
--Orson Welles
There are three intolerable things in life- cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.
--Orson Welles
There, but for the grace of God, goes God. (on Orson Welles).
--Herman Mankiewicz
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.
--Orson Welles
When you are down and out, something always turns up- and it is usually the noses of your friends.
--Orson Welles
Found 32 occurence(s) in 52,543 quotation(s).