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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I started at the top and worked my way down.

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

Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.

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

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

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

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

I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

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

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

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

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

A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves.

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.

I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.

The most personal thing I've put in [Touch of Evil] is my hatred of the abuse of police power. It's better to see a murderer go free than for a policeman to abuse his power.

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.

The cinema has no boundary; it is a ribbon of dream.

There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head.

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

Human nature is eternal; therefore one who follows his nature keeps his original nature, in the end.

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

I'm not basically a happy person, but I have all kinds of joy.

Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It's the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore.

I seem to have no dress sense at all. I'm always being listed in New York among one of the ten worst dressed men of the year. Someone once described me as "looking like an unmade bed." He was right!

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

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

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

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

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

We made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.

The basic and essential human is the woman.

Working is part of life, I don't know how to distinguish between the two... Work is an expression of life.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Computers combine things to make new knowledge at such high speed that we cannot absorb it.

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.