Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
—Orson Welles
I think we’re a kind of desperation. We’re sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we’re doing is trying to brighten up the place. That’s why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers—because males have got to try and justify their existence.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Men
Living in the lap of luxury isn’t bad, except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Luxury
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Ending
The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.
—Orson Welles
The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Law, Lawyers
A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
—Orson Welles
When you are down and out something always turns up—and it is usually the noses of your friends.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Difficulties, Difficulty
Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Hollywood
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
Topics: Solitude, Isolation
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four, unless there are three other people.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Weight, Diet, Kindness
I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Television
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
Topics: America
Gluttony is not a secret vice.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Vice, Diet, Weight
Everybody denies I am a genius—but nobody ever called me one!
—Orson Welles
Topics: Genius
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.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Atheism
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.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Theater
I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—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 girl friends. And they tolerated it and let us go ahead and play with our toys.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Women
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Man, Mankind, Temper, Anger
A good artist should be isolated. If he isn’t isolated, something is wrong.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Isolation
Only very intelligent people don’t wish they were in politics, and I’m dumb enough to want to be in there.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Politicians, Politics
The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Enemy
I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Manners, Behavior
Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that’s printed about him.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Actors, Acting
Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.
—Orson Welles
The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.
—Orson Welles
Topics: Audiences
I drag my myth around with me.
—Orson Welles
At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.
—Orson Welles
I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
—Orson Welles
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Cecil B. DeMille American Filmmaker
- Tim Robbins American Actor, Director
- Carl Reiner American Comedian
- George Lucas American Filmmaker
- Adam Sandler American Actor
- Eddie Murphy American Actor
- Sidney Poitier American Actor, Film Director
- Kirk Douglas American Actor
- Vincent Price American Actor
- George Carlin American Comedian
Leave a Reply