304 Quotes by Orson Welles

The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.

My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.

Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God's plan. Everybody thinks that if they don't get it, they're some kind of odd man out. And it's not true. Nobody gets justice - people just get good luck or bad luck.

I have an unfortunate personality.

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

. . . you [film critics] always overstress the value of images. You judge films in the first place by their visual impact instead of looking for content. This is a great disservice to the cinema. It is like judging a novel only by the quality of its prose. I was guilty of the same sin when I first started writing for the cinema. . . . Now I feel that only the literary mind can help the movies out of that cul de sac into which they have been driven by mere technicians and artificers.

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

The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.

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