Orson Welles Quotes

"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."

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

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

"I have an unfortunate personality."

"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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?"

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

"When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society."

"I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment."

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

"Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up."

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

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

"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."

"See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I'm profoundly convinced that that's a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks."

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

"I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time."

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

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

"I started at the top and worked my way down."

"I think I made essential a mistake in staying in movies, because I - but it's a mistake I can't regret, because it's like saying, 'I shouldn't have stayed married to that woman, but I did because I love her.'"

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

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

"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."

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

"People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas."