Quotes from 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.

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.

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

Husbands should revolt from time to time. Even the best circus-number becomes boring if the beast is too tame.

An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.

We will sell no wine before its time.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

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.

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.

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

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

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 the theater there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time - in the cinema, only one.

I love informality. I hate dressing up. I hate to be conventional - and I hate every kind of snob.

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

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.

Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?

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

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

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

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

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.

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