Theatre Quotes by Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

I'm extremely surprised to learn that a story, which has become familiar to children through the medium of comic strips and many succeeding novels…

— Orson Welles

I hate women, hate them generally, not in particular but in an abstract way. I hate them because one never really learns anything about…

— Orson Welles

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…

— Orson Welles

Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the…

— Orson Welles

I would rather be on the set than doing anything.

— Orson Welles

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

— Orson Welles

If I don't like somebody's looks, I don't like them.

— Orson Welles