Quotes from Orson Welles

A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.

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.

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

If you want a happy ending, it just depends on where you close the book!

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

In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.

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

You're beautful. Yes you are, you're very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful.

I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody.

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

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

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for a moment that we're not alone.

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

Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. Be of good heart, cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.