Top 100 Orson Quotes
#1. I love beautiful black-and-white movies - anything Bette Davis, especially 'Now', 'Voyager', 'Casablanca', 'Mildred Pierce'; anything by Orson Welles, Truffaut, or Godard; and 'Paper Moon' by Peter Bogdanovich.
Suzan-Lori Parks
#2. THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF ORSON SCOTT CARD Experience Card's full versatility, from science fiction to fantasy, from traditional narrative poetry to modern experimental fiction.
Orson Scott Card
#3. As a kid I watched the Academy Awards on television and always wanted one - or several - like one of my favorite directions, John Ford. He won six. On the other hand, Orson Welles, who's on the top of my list, didn't win any. Alfred Hitchcock didn't win any. Howard Hawks didn't win any.
Martin Scorsese
#4. I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.
Spencer Tracy
#5. Anyone who believes he has caught him in a fantastic lie is apt to find out that the fantastic story is the truth. And some unimportant statement, like just having bought an evening paper a half-hour ago, is the lie."
--On Orson Welles
Bernard Herrmann
#6. [On Orson Welles:] When I talk to him, I feel like a plant that's been watered.
Marlene Dietrich
#7. I fell in love with Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone and Hitchcock and Orson Welles and John Huston.
John Logan
#8. If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story - Orson Welles
Orson Welles
#9. [Orson Welles] was a man who made the greatest film ever made and was never forgiven for it.
Roger Ebert
#10. Only a certain breed of actor should ever even try to work for Orson Welles. I'm glad I'm one of that breed.
Mercedes McCambridge
#11. Like so many people, I only remembered Orson Welles as this huge, fat, bearded figure selling wine in TV commercials. So whenever anyone said I looked like Orson Welles I said that I wasn't that fat, and I would get on a diet, quickly.
Christian McKay
#12. I always had this childhood image in the back of my mind of this fantastic place where all the things I liked came from; Orson Welles, jazz, all that stuff. Los Angeles is one of those places where somebodies become nobodies and nobodies become somebody.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#13. Orson Welles, who said to Anita Bryant, Stop picketing me. What I said was I was a thespian. Never got a dinner!
Red Buttons
#14. I am the only actor who ever had to lose weight to play Orson Welles.
Christian McKay
#15. Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying.
Dorothy Parker
#16. Orson Welles was one of these people who was defying everything the doctors told him he wasn't supposed to be doing. He was really enjoying himself when he was eating what he wanted to eat.
Eartha Kitt
#17. If you want a favorite book, Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game'. You'll be hooked. I think he's written like twelve or thirteen.
Marisol Nichols
#18. If I could steal someone's dream myself, I'd have to go for one of Orson Welles.
Christopher Nolan
#19. Clarence Darrow was a unique and courageous man. Several of my favourite actors have played Darrow ... Henry Fonda, Orson Welles and Spencer Tracy.
Kevin Spacey
#20. The word genius was whispered into my ear the first things I ever Heard while I was still mewling in my crib, laughs Orson (Welles), so it never occured to me that I wasn't until middle age
Barbara Leaming
#21. Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?
Orson Welles
#22. Orson Welles lists Citizen Kane as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for Shadow of a Doubt, and Sir Carol Reed chose The Third Man - and I'm in all of them.
Joseph Cotten
#23. I had the good fortune of speaking with Orson Wells many decades ago and he said 'Success is primarily luck anyway.' And I have been very lucky. Of course, Orson Wells was enormously talented and brilliant - so who am I to argue with him!
George Kennedy
#24. When Orson Welles was acting in 'Compulsion,' the director Richard Fleischer let him just take over and direct the courtroom scenes. To be able to see Welles - who knew more about directing than anyone - direct himself and the other actors, it was unbelievable and unforgettable.
Robert Osborne
#25. Orson Welles was lazy. He was a late bloomer.
Xavier Dolan
#26. I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.
Patrick Macnee
#27. Orson Welles's second 'I-did-it' should show once and for all that film making, radio and the stage are three different guys better kept separated. 'The Magnificent Ambersons' is one of those versions of the richest family in town during the good old days.
Manny Farber
#28. I was watching Orson Welles and Jean Vigo films at a ridiculously young age.
Brady Corbet
#29. I was nine. I saw Orson Welles in 'Julius Caesar.' It was involving, emotional, imaginative. I've never forgotten it.
Harold Prince
#30. Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Tom Shales
#31. I've always tried to learn from the greats: Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Ghandi, Buddha, Jesus ... it's just that there's this tremendous pressure to correct all the things they got wrong.
Zach Braff
#32. I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane, Chandler, Jim Thompson, and noir movies like Fuller, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s, I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.
Frank Miller
#33. Forget Orson Welles, and heed Walt Whitman: "I am large, I contain multitudes."5
Ed Yong
#34. As a mentalist, perhaps only Orson Wells was in Jason's league. After a career in television, Randal has my endorsement. He's simply the best I've ever seen!
Merv Griffin
#35. There's a para-phrase about Orson Welles saying: "Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else." I've been very lucky ... before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all.
Colin Firth
#36. I discovered Orson Welles in college; my freshman English professor screened 'Citizen Kane' for us, and I wound up writing a 20-page term paper on it.
Claire Danes
#37. It always amazed me that he was able to do it, and that Orson Welles was able to do it. I never understood it because the talents are absolutely opposite - polar opposites.
Mark Rydell
#38. A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep.
Jon Katz
#39. Atop a Ferris wheel, Orson Welles told Joseph Cotten how Italy's thirty years of war and terror and bloodshed had produced the Renaissance and Michelangelo, and how Switzerland's five hundred years of democracy and peace had produced, goddamn, only the cuckoo clock.
Kevin Wilson
#40. It was great to watch Orson Welles, not only as an actor but as a director.
Max Von Sydow
#41. I don't take art as seriously as politics.
Orson Welles
#43. But most of those to whom Ender's Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.
Orson Scott Card
#44. Do not be disingenuous with me, Colonel Graff. Americans are quite apt at playing stupid when they choose to, but I am not to be deceived.
Orson Scott Card
#45. Idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths
Orson Scott Card
#46. Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.
Orson Scott Card
#47. Well, how do I know that they don't know the answer unless I ask?
Orson Scott Card
#48. If the Church has no the authority to tell its members that they may not engage in homosexual practices, then it has no authority at all. And if we accept the argument of the hypocrites of homosexuality that their sin is not a sin, we have destroyed ourselves.
Orson Scott Card
#49. Child-rearing today was so complicated. You always had to think of what they'd say on television later.
Orson Scott Card
#50. The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind.
Orson Scott Card
#51. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.
Orson Scott Card
#52. We pray for a messenger from God - who knows but what the messenger also prayed for a place to take his message?
Orson Scott Card
#53. Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you have to, but if the other guys despise you-you know what I mean?
Orson Scott Card
#54. Nobodys life ever goes according to plan.
So why do we keep on planning?
Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become.
And fail.
I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.
Orson Scott Card
#55. A man is not from where he is born, but where he chooses to die.
Orson Welles
#56. It was the waiting and watching that cost the most. For during that time he had to endure.
Orson Scott Card
#57. Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.
Orson Scott Card
#58. I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.
- Ender
Orson Scott Card
#59. You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you condemn a cabra for shewing up capim."
That's right," said Miro.
Ender smiled. "And that's why you'll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals.
Orson Scott Card
#60. Scholars don't have blood flowing in their veins," said Hamlet. "When they're wounded, they bleed logic, and when all of it is gone, their brains die, and they become ... soldiers.
Orson Scott Card
#61. A man who can't read only knows what other folks tell him.
Orson Scott Card
#63. Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent.
Orson Scott Card
#64. We're all tools in somebody's kit. But that doesn't mean we can't make tools out o other people. Or figure our interesting things to use ourselves for.
Orson Scott Card
#65. He was only a child, doing what adults led him to do; but somewhere in his heart he knew that even a child is a real person, that a child's acts are real acts, that even a child's play is not without moral context.
Orson Scott Card
#66. Could see or hear. That was what Alai had given him; a gift so sacred that even Ender could not be allowed
Orson Scott Card
#67. The most evil creatures dont desire the destruction of everythingthey only desire to exploit it for themselves.
Orson Scott Card
#68. If a person trains his mind to walk in the spirit, and brings his whole mind to bear upon its operations, and upon the principles of faith which are calculated to put him in possession of the power of God, how much greater will be his faculties for obtaining knowledge ...
Orson Pratt
#69. One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.
Orson Scott Card
#70. Don't judge me until you understand me. You can't understand me if you've already judged me.
Orson Scott Card
#71. You just live in the place you're in, you don't worry about where you used to be or where you wish you were, here is where you are and here's where you've got to find a way to survive
Orson Scott Card
#72. I didn't want to kill them all. I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm not a killer! You didn't want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!
Orson Scott Card
#73. Bean also saw how the man's body moved inside his clothes, with a kind of contained strength that made his clothes seem like Kleenex, he could rip through the fabric just by tugging at it a little, because nothing could hold him in except his own self-control.
Orson Scott Card
#74. I didn't want to see you." "They told me." "I was afraid that I'd still love you." "I hoped that you would.
Orson Scott Card
#75. Alvin smiled back, and kissed her. People talk about fools counting chickens before they hatch. That's nothing. We name them.
Orson Scott Card
#77. I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child, because everybody told me, from the moment I was able to hear, that I was absolutely marvelous, and I never heard a discouraging word for years, you see. I didn't know what was ahead of me.
Orson Welles
#78. Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.
Orson Scott Card
#79. As god is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it ... You don't save it by cutting that thread. - President Nielson
Orson Scott Card
#80. I stole their future from them; I can only being to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.
Orson Scott Card
#81. When your child goes off to war, you will never get him back. Not as he was, not the same boy. Changed, if he comes back at all.
Orson Scott Card
#82. It's like communes - people with nothing are always willing to share.
Orson Scott Card
#83. In my life, I had lost only two things: my favorite pair of gloves and a handful of my favorite people. But now? Now I was starting to lose the ground under my feet.
Orson De Witt
#84. Folks always seemed to think that as long as they didn't know about something bad, it wasn't happening, so whoever told them actually caused it to be true.
Orson Scott Card
#85. Your dream is a good one. [ ... ] The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It's the desire for greatness.
Orson Scott Card
#86. Poetry is the elder sister of history, the mother of language, the ancestress of civilization.
Orson F. Whitney
#87. The essence of training is to allow error without consequence.
Orson Scott Card
#88. Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels. I'm sorry, I'm your brother. I love you.
Orson Scott Card
#89. Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head.
Orson Welles
#90. Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll choose as we think they should?
Orson Scott Card
#91. If there hadn't been women we'd still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.
Orson Welles
#92. To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.
Orson Scott Card
#93. Maybe we're assigning Achilles supernatural powers," said Petra. "He isn't a god. Not even a hero. Just a sick kid." "No," said Bean. "I'm a sick kid. He's the devil." "Well, so," said Petra, "maybe the devil's a sick kid.
Orson Scott Card
#95. The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.
Orson Scott Card
#96. Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books.
Orson Scott Card
#97. I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.
Orson Scott Card
#98. The ambiguity of flesh made for a vastness of possibility that simply could not exist in a binary world.
Orson Scott Card
#99. You can't rule out the impossible, because you never know which of your assumptions about what was possible might turn out, in the real universe, to be false.
Orson Scott Card
#100. 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.
Orson Welles
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