Orson Welles Quotes

Author Image

Orson Welles

Profession : Actor

Birth : May 6, 1915

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

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.

Orson Welles

I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows.

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

Everything bad that has ever happened to me has been caused by agents or lawyers.

Orson Welles

I started at the top and worked my way down.

Orson Welles

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present.

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

I'm never certain of a performance - my own or the other actors' - or the script or anything... But to me it seems there's only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles