Orson Welles
Citizen Kane, transformed cinema and radio
Most quoted
"I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my personal life. I've been married three times. I've been a father. I've been a lover. I've been a friend. I've been a lot of things. I've been a lot of things that I'm not now. I've been a lot of things that I'm not now. I've been a lot of things that I'm not now."
"I believe that television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television—of that I am quite sure."
— from Speech: 'The Mercury Theatre on the Air', 1938
"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."
— from Film: The Third Man (as Harry Lime), 1949
All quotes by Orson Welles (351)
We are 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.
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
I don't say I'm a good man. I say I'm a man who's trying to be good.
The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
If there hadn't been women, there wouldn't have been any of us.
I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
The director is the only one who knows what the film is about.
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 hint and they will make their own picture, and they'll be twice as pleased.
The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.
I started at the top and have been working my way down ever since.
There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, so just give me a happy middle and a very happy start.
The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.
I have a great love for the stage, but I'm not a stage director. I'm a film director.
The only thing that will make me stop making movies is death.
I'm not a man who likes to be told what to do.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
I don't believe in happy endings. I believe in happy journeys.
The artist is a man who is always trying to escape from the prison of his own mind.
I prefer the company of people who are not afraid to be themselves.
The true artist is a man who has nothing to say.
Contemporaries of Orson Welles
Other Film & Theaters born within 50 years of Orson Welles (1915–1985).