Talk:Orson Welles

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Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Orson Welles. --Antiquary 19:35, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

• Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

• Gluttony is not a secret vice.

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

• I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

• Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

• My doctor has advised me to give up those intimate little dinners for four. Unless there are three people eating with me.

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

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

• The trouble with a movie is that it's old before it's released. It's no accident that it comes in a can.

• If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

• She's the most exciting woman in the world!
  • When he was asked about working with Eartha Kitt.

• Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad, except you never know when luxury is going to stand up.
  • The earliest source of this quote, that I found is in The American Flint magazine from 1935[1]. It isn't attributed to anyone, so I have my doubts that Welles actually said this.Peterklevy (talk) 15:39, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

• Everybody denies that I am genius - but nobody ever called me one.

Quotes about Welles (unsourced)

• Orson Welles est une sorte de géant au regard enfantin, un arbre rempli d’oiseaux et d’ombre, un chien qui a cassé sa chaîne et se couche dans les plates-bandes, un paresseux actif, un fou sage, une ile au milieu de la foule, un élève assoupi en classe, un stratège qui fait semblant d’être ivre quand il veut qu’on luit foute la paix.
  • Orson Welles is a kind of giant with the look of a child, a tree filled with birds and shadow, a dog that has broken its chain and lies down in the flower beds, an active idler, a wise madman, an island surrounded by people, a pupil asleep in class, a strategist who pretends to be drunk when he wants to be left in peace.
  • Jean Cocteau

• To me, Orson is so much like a destitute king. A ‘destitute’ king, not because he was thrown away from the kingdom, but [because] on this earth, the way the world is, there is no kingdom good enough for Orson Welles.
  • Jeanne Moreau

• Orson’s lifelong attraction to the art that has as its very essence the blurring of the line between reality and illusion was another piece of this same puzzle: Nothing gave him as much consistent pleasure as teasing audiences, and himself, with the many masks of magic.
  • Henry Jaglom

• The man I got to know so well in no way resembled the mythical mask-wearer that everyone else saw and believed him to be. I discovered an incredibly open, deeply warm, and profoundly human friend, one who was generous to an unbelievable fault, was caring and concerned, and was vulnerable to the point of such fragility that he could be wounded terribly by the unaware, casual, critical statement of almost any outsider. I was always astounded by the way in which so many who did not know him viewed him as an arrogant, terrifying, egocentric ogre. They approached him with so much diffidence and fear as to set him up in such a way that his only possible response would be to satisfy their expectations. The Mask would win again.
  • Henry Jaglom

Can anyone verify if this is the correct source for the happy ending quote? http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/5251107539

It appears so, see here. And in this snippet view, it reads: « ...pulls away from a station – the voices of Kim and Blake in duet. The screenplay ends on paper: "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." » ("Kim" and "Blake" are both characters from The Big Brass Ring.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 11:00, 22 March 2014 (UTC)