Orson Welles

I have no great message to the world.

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

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

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

One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer. When social or moral points are too heavily stressed, I always get uncomfortable.

Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.

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

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

I'm one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour - and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.

The first thing one must remember about film is that it is a young medium. And it is essential for every responsible artist to cultivate the ground that has been left fallow.

I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations.

I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child, because everybody told me, from the moment I was able to hear, that I was absolutely marvelous, and I never heard a discouraging word for years, you see. I didn't know what was ahead of me.

I don't like television when it gets near to photographed plays.

When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.

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.

In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, 'cause it was lawless. A man's word had to mean something.

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.

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

If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.

The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a conceit of the producer.

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

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

If I don't like somebody's looks, I don't like them.

I am essentially a hack, a commercial person. If I had a hobby, I would immediately make money on it or abandon it.

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

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

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.

I never said I was a genius.

There were centuries when civilization had no theater.

As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I've never heard one say, 'No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.' They will always say, 'You don't like him? I've got somebody else.' They're totally spineless.

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.

In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn't stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night.

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

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

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.

Each multiplex has screens allocated to each studio. The screens need filling. Studios have to create product to fill their screen, and the amount of good product is limited.

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.'

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

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

I would rather be on the set than doing anything.

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

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.

The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate.

I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.

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

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

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.

I've spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I'm not irresponsible.

Film is like a colony and there are very few colonists.