A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents.
ORSON WELLESI’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.
More Orson Welles Quotes
-
-
Criticism is the essence of creation.
ORSON WELLES -
I started at the top and worked my way down.
ORSON WELLES -
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.
ORSON WELLES -
I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.
ORSON WELLES -
Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.
ORSON WELLES -
Old age is the only disease you dont want to be cured of.
ORSON WELLES -
An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.
ORSON WELLES -
I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.
ORSON WELLES -
Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.
ORSON WELLES -
Working is part of life, I don’t know how to distinguish between the two. Work is an expression of life.
ORSON WELLES -
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 -
My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.
ORSON WELLES -
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 -
Living in the lap of luxury isn’t bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.
ORSON WELLES -
We’re 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.
ORSON WELLES -
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.
ORSON WELLES -
People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.
ORSON WELLES -
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 -
I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out.
ORSON WELLES -
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 -
When you are down and out something always turns up – and it is usually the noses of your friends.
ORSON WELLES -
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
ORSON WELLES -
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 -
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.
ORSON WELLES -
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 -
I don’t pray really, because I don’t want to bore God.
ORSON WELLES