Orson Welles Quotes

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Orson Welles

Profession : Actor

Birth : May 6, 1915

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

Orson Welles

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

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

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

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.

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

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.

Orson Welles

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

Orson Welles

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.

Orson Welles

I never said I was a genius.

Orson Welles