Orson Welles quote: "The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents."

I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.
ORSON WELLES

I have an unfortunate personality.
ORSON WELLES

I've spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I'm not irresponsible.
ORSON WELLES

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
ORSON WELLES

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we creat...
ORSON WELLES

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.
ORSON WELLES

I started at the top and worked my way down.
ORSON WELLES

The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a con...
ORSON WELLES

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem ...
ORSON WELLES

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
ORSON WELLES

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won...
ORSON WELLES

The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achiev...
ORSON WELLES

Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.
ORSON WELLES

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Don...
ORSON WELLES

Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out o...
ORSON WELLES

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
ORSON WELLES

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in ...
ORSON WELLES

'The Godfather' was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed.
ORSON WELLES

The laws and the stage, both are a form of exhibitionism.
ORSON WELLES

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civili...
ORSON WELLES

They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.
ORSON WELLES

The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, an...
ORSON WELLES

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four unless there are three other people.
ORSON WELLES

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
ORSON WELLES

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with...
ORSON WELLES

I hate it when people pray on the screen. It's not because I hate praying, but whenever I see an act...
ORSON WELLES

I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human...
ORSON WELLES

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
ORSON WELLES

Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.
ORSON WELLES

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the ...
ORSON WELLES

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.
ORSON WELLES

When you are down and out something always turns up -- and it is usually the noses of your friends.
ORSON WELLES

Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for ...
ORSON WELLES

Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one!
ORSON WELLES

A film is never really any good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
ORSON WELLES

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it -- yesterday it wa...
ORSON WELLES

The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an...
ORSON WELLES

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
ORSON WELLES

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they ...
ORSON WELLES

It's weird...you know the end of something great is coming, but you want to hold on, just for one mo...
ORSON WELLES

Ecstasy is not really part of the scene we can do on celluloid.
ORSON WELLES

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
ORSON WELLES

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create th...
ORSON WELLES

The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch swing with, never say a word, then walk a...
ORSON WELLES

Each multiplex has screens allocated to each studio. The screens need filling. Studios have to creat...
ORSON WELLES

I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.
ORSON WELLES

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we mad...
ORSON WELLES

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
ORSON WELLES

There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present.
ORSON WELLES

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
ORSON WELLES

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
ORSON WELLES

The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.
ORSON WELLES

Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a pr...
ORSON WELLES

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn
ORSON WELLES

Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the ...
ORSON WELLES

I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own inter...
ORSON WELLES

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.
ORSON WELLES

I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agn...
ORSON WELLES

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.
ORSON WELLES

I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with h...
ORSON WELLES

There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.
ORSON WELLES

I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies... Egotism an...
ORSON WELLES

Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money a...
ORSON WELLES

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cu...
ORSON WELLES

If you want a happy ending, it just depends on where you close the book!
ORSON WELLES

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.
ORSON WELLES

Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one!
ORSON WELLES

I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child, because everybody told me, from the moment I was abl...
ORSON WELLES

In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic ...
ORSON WELLES

You're beautful. Yes you are, you're very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful.
ORSON WELLES

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.
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

I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't ...
ORSON WELLES

I would just like to mention Robert Houdin who in the eighteenth century invented the vanishing bird...
ORSON WELLES

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with h...
ORSON WELLES

I hate television. I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
ORSON WELLES

Gluttony is not a secret vice.
ORSON WELLES

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
ORSON WELLES

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.
ORSON WELLES

I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human...
ORSON WELLES

The first thing one must remember about film is that it is a young medium. And it is essential for e...
ORSON WELLES

In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word i...
ORSON WELLES

Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand u...
ORSON WELLES

One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer. When social or moral points are too h...
ORSON WELLES

If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe ver...
ORSON WELLES

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
ORSON WELLES

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a...
ORSON WELLES

As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a lim...
ORSON WELLES

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.
ORSON WELLES

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations
ORSON WELLES

I am essentially a hack, a commercial person. If I had a hobby, I would immediately make money on it...
ORSON WELLES

At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable.
ORSON WELLES

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends
ORSON WELLES

The title is so good, you don't have to make the movie; just release the title.
ORSON WELLES

The basic and essential human is the woman
ORSON WELLES

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Don...
ORSON WELLES

See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I'm profoundly co...
ORSON WELLES

performed at least a dozen Shakespearean characters at the Yale Repertory Theatre and ART, and direc...
ORSON WELLES

For my vision of the cinema,
ORSON WELLES

Hollywood died on me as soon as I got there
ORSON WELLES

I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms....
ORSON WELLES

Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the litt...
ORSON WELLES

Keep Ted Turner and his goddamned Crayolas away from my movies
ORSON WELLES

I have an early call tomorrow. For a commercial. Dog food, I think it is this time. No, I do not eat...
ORSON WELLES

I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.
ORSON WELLES

I don't pray because I don't want to bore God.
ORSON WELLES

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
ORSON WELLES

Viele Menschen sind gut genug erzogen, um nicht mit vollem Mund zu sprechen, aber sie haben keine Be...
ORSON WELLES

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.
ORSON WELLES

I drag my myth around with me
ORSON WELLES

I'm not bitter about Hollywood's treatment of me, but of its treatment of Griffith, von Sternberg, B...
ORSON WELLES

We made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends
ORSON WELLES

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civili...
ORSON WELLES

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.
ORSON WELLES

Faces in color tend to look like meat, veal, beef, bologna
ORSON WELLES

as close to a genius as anyone I have ever met.
ORSON WELLES

The director is simply the audience. . . . His job is to preside over accidents.
ORSON WELLES

I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of t...
ORSON WELLES

Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.
ORSON WELLES

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.
ORSON WELLES

In the theater there are 1,500 cameras rolling at the same time - in the cinema, only one
ORSON WELLES

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with h...
ORSON WELLES

The word genius was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard, while I was still mewling i...
ORSON WELLES

I don't say that we ought to all misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
ORSON WELLES

I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you're guilt...
ORSON WELLES

Many would never speak with a full mouth, but do it with an empty head
ORSON WELLES

If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. P...
ORSON WELLES

I know people who have a much better recollection of their childhood than I do. They remember very w...
ORSON WELLES

On my tombstone, I want written: 'He never did 'Love Boat!'
ORSON WELLES

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.
ORSON WELLES

Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium ...
ORSON WELLES

A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
ORSON WELLES

This crowd did not diminish through the whole of that cold, wet day; they seemed not to know what wa...
GIDEON WELLES

It is vain to expect a well-balanced government without a well-balanced society.
GIDEON WELLES

The War has been waged with success, although there have been in some instances errors and misfortun...
GIDEON WELLES

The kingdom of God is a theocracy. And as it is the only form of government which will redeem and sa...
ORSON PRATT

I was ordained one of the standing High Council in Zion, under the hands of President Joseph Smith.
ORSON PRATT

Do not suffer any man to baptize or minister unto you, unless God has spoken unto him by the voice o...
ORSON PRATT

It is a grievous sin in the sight of God for any man to presume to baptize, unless God has authorize...
ORSON PRATT

The true God He has extension, and form, and dimensions. He occupies space; has a body, parts, and p...
ORSON PRATT

An order of government, established by such an all-wise, powerful being, must be good and perfect, a...
ORSON PRATT

At various times during the last four thousand years God has asserted his rights and endeavoured to ...
ORSON PRATT

Noah and his family were the only loyal and obedient subjects to the legal power: they alone were sa...
ORSON PRATT

On the 1st day of December, 1830, I was confirmed, and in accordance with the word of the Lord I was...
ORSON PRATT

The greatest desire of my heart was for the Lord to manifest His will concerning me.
ORSON PRATT

The Godhead consists of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is a material being.
ORSON PRATT

The system of idolatry, invented by modern christianity, far surpasses in absurdity anything that we...
ORSON PRATT

The kingdom of God is an order of government established by divine authority. It is the only legal g...
ORSON PRATT

A true servant of God will never teach a false doctrine. He will never deny new revelation. He never...
ORSON PRATT

God is the King. In him exists all legal authority.
ORSON PRATT

God is a spirit. A spirit is as much matter as oxygen or hydrogen.
ORSON PRATT

Any people attempting to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and by officers of their own...
ORSON PRATT

God the Father and God the Son cannot be everywhere present; indeed they cannot be even in two place...
ORSON PRATT

If God had sufficient wisdom and power to construct such a beautiful world as this, then we must adm...
ORSON PRATT

All the modern christian churches have no more authority to preach, baptize, or administer any other...
ORSON PRATT

It was seldom that I attended any religious meetings, as my parents had not much faith in and were n...
ORSON PRATT

Each atom of the Holy Spirit is intelligent, and like all other matter has solidity, form, and size,...
ORSON PRATT

To give an accurate description of what never happened is the proper occupation of the historian.
ORSON WELLS

My name is Orson Bean. Harvard '47, Yale Nothing.
ORSON BEAN

The trap is man's armored character structure and there's only one way out of it. It's not drugs and...
ORSON BEAN

Instead, it relies on skewed descriptions of the results of the Commission's 2000 Survey and studies...
ORSON SWINDLE

We should not have our children going to school to learn how to become obese.
JEANNE KOHL-WELLES

I hope I am remembered by my children as a good father.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I listen to music constantly while writing.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citize...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Of course, I also hear from critics who detest what I do, and while sometimes I feel rather proud of...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values tha...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inve...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - par...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

You who speak languages, you are such liars.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The priests say that God created our souls, and that just puts us under the control of another puppe...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Ulysses, obviously. It was an elaborate prank, and our supposed intellectual elite continue to fall ...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in th...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The education that prepared me was my general education classes, which I tried to avoid when I was a...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - t...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Working is hard and distracts from having fun.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good', to...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
ORSON SCOTT CARD

Jesus of Nazareth was a poet, no less than a prophet, of pre-eminent genius.
ORSON F. WHITNEY

It is my belief that many who think they dislike poetry are really poetical in their natures and are...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

Only those ignorant of what poetry means will ask the question: what is it good for?
ORSON F. WHITNEY

Poetry is the elder sister of history, the mother of language, the ancestress of civilization.
ORSON F. WHITNEY

Nearly all men and women are poetical, to some extent, but very few can be called poets. There are g...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

Our Heavenly Father is far more merciful, infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his serv...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

Sound moral principle is the only sure evidence of strength, the only firm foundation of greatness a...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

You parents of the wilful and the wayward! Don't give them up. Don't cast them off. They are...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

Poetry is that sentiment of the soul, or faculty of the mind, which enables its possessor to appreci...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

The spirit of the gospel is optimistic; it trusts in God and looks on the bright side of things. The...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

Jesus Christ was a patriot! His country was the world. His laws were the eternal principles of liber...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to the development of su...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

The other four houses yielded jewelry, wallets, credit cards, laptops, iPads and Kindles, even a cou...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in th...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

You made them hate me." Said Ender
"So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kis...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the...
ORSON F. WHITNEY

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I w...
ORSON SCOTT CARD

The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.

Orson Welles

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