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.
ORSON WELLESI don’t pray really, because I don’t want to bore God.
More Orson Welles Quotes
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Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.
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Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.
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I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.
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In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.
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Friendship creates only the illusion of not being alone.
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Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of.
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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.
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I love informality. I hate dressing up. I hate to be conventional – and I hate every kind of snob.
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Hollywood is Hollywood. There’s nothing you can say about it that isn’t true, good or bad. And if you get into it, you have no right to be bitter — you’re the one who sat down, and joined the game.
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The director is simply the audience. His job is to preside over accidents.
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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 an unfortunate personality.
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When you are down and out something always turns up – and it is usually the noses of your friends.
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The director is the most overrated artist in the world. He is the only artist who, with no talent whatsoever, can be a success for 50 years without his lack of talent ever being discovered.
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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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Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There’s a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.
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The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
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Crooks aren’t the worst people, just the stupidest. The fleas of the world.
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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 suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.
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I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out.
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A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents.
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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 started at the top and worked my way down.
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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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Personally, I don’t like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she’ll fool her husband, I figure she’ll fool me.
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Future shock is a sickness which comes from too much change in too short a time. It’s the feeling that nothing is permanent anymore.
ORSON WELLES