Orson Welles

Criticism is the essence of creation.

— Orson Welles

I drag my myth around with me.

— Orson Welles

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

— Orson Welles

I have an unfortunate personality.

— Orson Welles

I never said I was a genius.

— Orson Welles

She's a perfect person, I hate the bitch.

— Orson Welles

Fake is as old as the Eden tree.

— Orson Welles

I'm a lurid character!

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

“Roosevelt used to say, "You and I are the two best actors in America.”

— Orson Welles

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

— Orson Welles

My definition of success is not having things thrown at me!

— Orson Welles

I'd make my promises now if I wasn't so busy arranging to keep them.

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

Now I'm an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall…

— Orson Welles

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in…

— Orson Welles

Husbands should revolt from time to time. Even the best circus-number becomes boring if the beast is too tame.

— Orson Welles

Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything…

— Orson Welles

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like…

— Orson Welles

I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who…

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to…

— Orson Welles

In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the…

— 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,…

— Orson Welles

One should make movies innocently - the way Adam and Eve named the animals, their first day in the garden. Learn from…

— Orson Welles

There are never many, never enough of them, but there are men born into the world with a gaze fixed on the…

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

Six years ago, I looked at a picture of the world's greatest newspaper men. I felt like a kid in front of…

— Orson Welles

Everybody is somebody's fool.The only way to stay out of trouble is to grow old, so I guess I'll concentrate on that.…

— Orson Welles

I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and…

— Orson Welles

“I believe that we're much healthier if we think of our selfishness as sin. Which is what it is: a sin. Even…

— Orson Welles

The people who've done well within the [Hollywood] system are the people whose instincts, whose desires [are in natural alignement with those…

— Orson Welles

“No matter what the Bible says—and I'm not a fundamentalist—I just don't think that men were the first. I don't think that…

— Orson Welles

That doesn't make any sense. Sorry. There's no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin a sentence with…

— Orson Welles

Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two,…

— Orson Welles

“Women are another race. They are always changing, like the moon. You can only win by being the cool center of their…

— Orson Welles

“Exactly, I repeated myself. I believe we do it all the time. We always take up certain elements again. How can it…

— Orson Welles

Take myself as a good-will ambassador. I'm great - I'm taking myself as a character - for the intellectuals and the man…

— Orson Welles