Orson Welles

Writer, Actor, and film director

Works: Citizen Kane, Othello (1952), Touch of Evil, and many more

Sourced

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
- The Third Man (1949)

He [Welles] was an onlooker at the clumsy, poignant suicide of "The Man on the Ledge," which took place in New York in 1938, when a boy perched for fourteen hours on a window-sill of the Gotham Hotel before plunging into the street. "I stood in the crowd outside for a long time," Welles says pensively, "and wanted to make a film of it all. But they tell me that in the Hollywood version of the film they gave the boy a reason for what he did. That's crazy. It's the crowd that needs explaining."
- Kenneth Tynan, "Orson Welles" (1953), printed in Profiles (1990)

A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens.
- Quoted by Peter Bogdanovich, from the DVD audio commentary on The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

That doesn't make any sense. Sorry. There's no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin a sentence with "in" and emphasize it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say "In July" and I'll go down on you. That's just idiotic, if you'll forgive me by saying so. That's just stupid... "In July"; I'd love to know how you emphasize "In" in "In July". Impossible! Meaningless!

You don't know what I'm up against. Because it's full of, of, of things that are only correct because they're grammatical, but they're tough on the ear, you see. This is a very wearying one. It's unpleasant to read. Unrewarding. "Because Findus freeze the cod at sea, and then add a crumb-crisp" Ooh, "crumb-crisp coating." Ahh, that's tough, "crumb-crisp coating." I think, no, because of the way it's written, you need to break it up, because it's not, it's not as conversationally written.

We know a little place in the American Far West, where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie-fed beef and tastes. This is a lot of shit, you know that. You want one more? One more on the beef?

But you can't emphasize "beef", that's like his wanting me to emphasize "in" before "July"! Come on, fellows, you're losing your heads! I wouldn't direct any living actor like this in Shakespeare! The way you do this, it's impossible!

I spend... twenty times more for you people than any other commercial I've ever made. You are such pests! Now what is it you want? In your... depths of your ignorance, what is it you want? Whatever it is you want, I can't deliver, 'cause I just don't see it.

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

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

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

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

The trouble with a movie is that it's old before it's released. It's no accident that it comes in a can.

(In response to Ted Turner's announcement of plans to colorize Citizen Kane) Tell Turner to keep his goddamned Crayolas away from my film!