People shouldn't get into show business because they want to become stars or become rich; they should get into it because they can't help but put on a show.

It's wrong to make a living off the theater. Theater should be supported, like redwood trees. You should make your living - whether you're a writer or an actor or a director - in movies or commercials. But you do theater out of love.

I don't know anyone who doesn't have an empty spot at the center of him, which must be filled in order to be really happy. That spot, like it or not, is reserved for God.

Cecil B. DeMille worshipped the almighty buck.

Strange are the ways of human behavior.

San Francisco is a city; L.A. is a collection of suburbs that have very little in common with one another.

Most municipalities grow up around commerce; there's a harbor, or the train stops there. Venice, CA was founded for fun.

If there should be one place where you should forget politics, forget whether you're liberal or conservative, whether you hate Trump or love him, it should be the ballgame.

It's never been written about, but before the blacklist of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, there was a de facto blacklist by Communists in the movie industry, and there were a lot of them.

I was blacklisted and overnight my TV appearances dried up. Ed Sullivan called to cancel my appearance and said he'd help me when he could, and a year later he did. Only a few wackos wanted the blacklist. It was a protection racket.

I never cared what anyone thought about me.

I loved New York in the '50s.

Being a good game show panelist is like being a virtuoso of the kazoo.

I made a decision a few years back to never again do anything professionally that I didn't want to do.

My grandfather lived in New England all his life and was a Vermonter.

Advertising has always been part show biz.

I grew up on Harvard Square and I watched 50-year old men walking around with green book bags slung over their shoulders going for their fourth PhD, never having left the world of academia to alleged reality.

My father was an odd stick. He was a member of MENSA and he was a uniformed yard cop for the Harvard police.

I did a lot of TV work for more than 30 years in New York and L.A., but I would get on the stage whenever I could.

Young actors ask me for advice. They say, 'Should I get an agent?' I tell them, 'Don't worry about that. Act, act, act. Get into that production of 'The Three Sisters' in a church basement. Consider every audition a chance to act, even if it's just for three minutes. Just do it whenever and wherever you can.'

We believe in satisfying our own needs but always considering others.

I don't believe most kids enjoy school at all, and that's a shameful waste, considering how curious and excited kids are to learn. They're naturally curious, full of wonder.

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

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

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

I have an unfortunate personality.

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.

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

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

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

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

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?

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.

The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.

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

Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.

I started at the top and worked my way down.

I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Gluttony is not a secret vice.

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.

I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.

I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.

Nobody who takes on anything big and tough can afford to be modest.

I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.