Quotes By Orson Welles

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 started at the top and worked my way down.

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

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

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

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

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