Quotes from Orson Welles

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

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

Friendship creates only the illusion of not being alone.

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

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we're doing is trying to brighten up the place. That's why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers because males have got to try and justify their existence.

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.

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

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

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.

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

I drag my myth around with me

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

When you are down and out something always turns up -- and it is usually the noses of your friends.

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

A policeman's job is only easy in a police state.

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

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

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.

A certain great and powerful king once asked a poet: "What can I give you of all that I have?" He wisely replied, "Anything sir… except your secret."