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)
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
The best thing that can happen to a director is to be fired. It happened to me, and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a filmmaker an army.
I'm essentially a studio man; I like the studio. I'm not a location man. I don't like locations. I like the studio because it's the only place where you can be the absolute dictator that a film director has to be.
When you are down and out something always turns up — and it is usually the noses of your friends.
I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
The magnificence of his gesture was a perpetual challenge. He was forever giving you the finger.
I'm not a star. I'm a director. Stars are people who live in Hollywood and have heart-shaped swimming pools.
The greatest gift of the cinema is the close-up. It can show you what a person is thinking.
I play the part myself. I'm the narrator. I also do a couple of other voices. I play the part of the director. That's the one I know best.
I try to be a Christian, but I'm not very good at it.
I'm a man of extremes. I'm either working like a dog or doing nothing.
The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living after it's dead.
I have spent most of my life trying to be other people: Houdini, Cyrano, Faust, Mephistopheles, Lear, Othello, Falstaff, and even Jesus Christ. I have failed, of course, but I have had a wonderful time failing.
The camera is much more than a recording apparatus; it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.
I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.
To be an actor you have to be a child.
I'm an incurable actor. I will act anywhere, for anyone, at any time.
The word 'genius' was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard, while I was still mewling in my crib, so it never occurred to me that I wasn't until middle age.
Contemporaries of Orson Welles
Other Film & Theaters born within 50 years of Orson Welles (1915–1985).