Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?
Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.
When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.
I’m one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour – and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.
Make up an extra copy of that picture and send it to the Chronicle.
My definition of success is not having things thrown at me!
Fake is as old as the Eden tree.
They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.
Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don’t have to be anything else.
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.
At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.
Living in the lap of luxury isn’t bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.
I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
A good artist should be isolated. If he isn’t isolated, something is wrong.
See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I’m profoundly convinced that that’s a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks.
I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.
A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a director an army.
I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don’t think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.
The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.