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I love informality. I hate dressing up. I hate to be conventional – and I hate every kind of snob.

Orson Welles

I’m never certain of a performance – my own or the other actors’ – or the script or anything. But to me it seems there’s only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.
ORSON WELLES

Actor Camera Decision Myself Performance Place Script World
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.
ORSON WELLES

Dependent Election Fame Politics Popular
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 WELLES

Expression Ideal Perfection Reality
Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.
ORSON WELLES

Abandonment Deep Hate Human Nature Race Wisdom
I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
ORSON WELLES

Artist Hate Himself Ideas Myself Passion Thinking Time
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.
ORSON WELLES

Amazing Crime Failure Money Problem Reality
I’ve spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I’m not irresponsible.
ORSON WELLES

Evidence Life Maturity Myself Responsibility
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.
ORSON WELLES

Food Myself Restaurant Talk Wait
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.
ORSON WELLES

Country Food Yourself
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.
ORSON WELLES

Live Murder Myself Philosophy Saint
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.
ORSON WELLES

Care Confidence Equality Ignorance Professional Yourself
I’ve never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies. Egotism and laziness. And they’re all lit like television shows.
ORSON WELLES

Ego Movie Myself Understand
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.
ORSON WELLES

Civilization Eat Impression Ourselves Relationship Woman
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
ORSON WELLES

Camera Eyes Goodness Movie Poet
A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves.
ORSON WELLES

Bad Darkness Day Encouragement Need Ourselves Word
Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.
ORSON WELLES

Artist Himself Magic True

I love informality. I hate dressing up. I hate to be conventional – and I hate every kind of snob.

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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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Popular Authors

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