"Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up."
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Quote collection
Orson Welles quotes (page 5 of 10)
199 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"My kind of director is an actor-director who writes."
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"I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don't think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money."
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"Hollywood is a gold-plated suburb suitable for golfers, gardeners, assorted middlemen, and contented movies stars. I am none of these things."
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"Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem."
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"On my tombstone, I want written: 'He never did 'Love Boat!''"
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"The word genius was whispered into my ear, the first thing I ever heard, while I was still mewling in my crib. So it never occurred to me that I wasn't until middle age."
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"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."
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"I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we're doing is trying to brighten up the place. That's why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers - because males have got to try and justify their existence."
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"The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left."
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"I've spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I'm not irresponsible."
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"The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention."
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"The director is simply the audience. His job is to preside over accidents."
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"At twenty-one, so many things appear solid, permanent, untenable."
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"I don't pray really, because I don't want to bore God."
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"I dont believe in learning from other peoples pictures. I think you should learn from your own interior vision of things and discover, as I say, Innocently, as though there had never been anybody."
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"A director is someone who presides over a series of accidents."
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"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."
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"Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much."
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"The director is the most overrated artist in the world. He is the only artist who, with no talent whatsoever, can be a success for 50 years without his lack of talent ever being discovered."
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