Orson Welles Quotes
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Just breathe at the end of the line or on the punctuation. If you lose that, and lose the iambic pentameter, you'll lose all the sense of what you're saying. And if you do breathe, you'll find that Shakespeare's verse is like a surfboard.
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Men created civilization only to impress their girl friends
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The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.
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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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The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.
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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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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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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 Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.
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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 laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.
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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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I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.
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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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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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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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Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.
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Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
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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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The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.
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The right reading for this is the one I'm giving.
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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.
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In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!