Orson Welles

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

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

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

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.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

If you want a happy ending, that depends of course on where you stop your story.

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

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Race hate isn't human nature, race hate is the abandonment of human nature.

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.

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.

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

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

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

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

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.

The laws and the stage both are a form of exhibitionism.

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.

Personally I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband I figure she'll fool me.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

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

The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium you do it.

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.

They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.

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

I have an unfortunate personality.

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.

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

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.

I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

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

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.

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

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

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.

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.

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

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

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

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

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

The best thing commercially which is the worst artistically by and large is the most successful.