Orson Welles Quotes - Page 8

Movie directing is a perfect refuge for the mediocre.

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.

As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I've never heard one say, 'No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.' They will always say, 'You don't like him? I've got somebody else.' They're totally spineless.

I never make my mind up about anything at all, until it's over and done with.

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

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

Six years ago, I looked at a picture of the world's greatest newspaper men. I felt like a kid in front of a candy store. Well, tonight, six years later, I got my candy - all of it. Welcome, gentlemen, to the Inquirer! Make up an extra copy of that picture and send it to the Chronicle

I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations.

I don't like television when it gets near to photographed plays.

A movie studio is the best toy a boy ever had.

The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.

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

The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a conceit of the producer.

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

If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.

As for my style, for my vision of the cinema, editing is not simply one aspect; it's the aspect.

You could write all the IDEAS of all the movies, my own included, on the head of a pin.

Film is like a colony and there are very few colonists.

There are a thousand ways of playing a good classic. If it were effective, I would play Hamlet on a trapeze.

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

I discovered at the age of six that everything was a phony, worked with mirrors. Since then, I've always wanted to be a magician.

A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows - his own.

Each multiplex has screens allocated to each studio. The screens need filling. Studios have to create product to fill their screen, and the amount of good product is limited.

When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.