Orson Welles Quotes
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Everything bad that has ever happened to me has been caused by agents or lawyers.
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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.
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I never said I was a genius.
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The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.
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I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.
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When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.
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If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they're talking.
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Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.
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The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.
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I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.
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I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows.
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Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.
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'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.
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I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.
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Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.
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I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.
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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.
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Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.
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The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate.
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Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
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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.
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I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.
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I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
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I have only one real enemy in my life that I know about, and that is John Houseman. Everything begins and ends with that hostility behind the mandarin benevolence.