Orson Welles

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a graveannouncement to make. Incredible as it mayseem, strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading armyfrom Mars.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that’s printed about him.

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

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

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I don’t pray because I don’t want to bore God.

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

I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out

Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.

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.

The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate.

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

Everybody denies I am a genius - but nobody ever called me one.

Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.

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

The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.

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

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

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

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.

I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.

I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child, because everybody told me, from the moment I was able to hear, that I was absolutely marvelous, and I never heard a discouraging word for years, you see. I didn't know what was ahead of me.

I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.

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

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.

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

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

If you want a happy ending it depends, of course, on where you end the story.

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.

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

The cinema has no boundary; it is a ribbon of dream.

There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.

This is the biggest electric train a boy ever had!

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.