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 waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.

I don't pray because I don't want to bore God.

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

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.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.

I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.

In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn't stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night.

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

I have no great message to the world.

I've spent most of my mature life trying to prove that I'm not irresponsible.

I would rather be on the set than doing anything.

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

Race hate isn't human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.

In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, 'cause it was lawless. A man's word had to mean something.

They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies.

Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.

If you've noticed that I don't use long takes, it's not because I don't like them, but because no one gives me the necessary means to treat myself to them. It's more economical to make one image, then this image and then that image, and try to control them later, in the editing studio.

Hollywood is the only industry, even taking in soup companies, which does not have laboratories for the purpose of experimentation.