Orson Welles

Orson Welles (6 May 1915 - 10 October 1985), writer, actor and film director :

Found 18 thoughts of 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.

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

You know from past experiences that whenever you have been driven to the wall, or thought you were, you have extricated yourself in a way which you never would have dreamed possible had you not been put to the test. The trouble is that in your everyday life you don't go deep enough to tap the divine mind within you.

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

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

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

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.

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

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I have an unfortunate personality.

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