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Orson Welles: Cinna is Shakespeare's indictment of the intelligentsia. He's a lofty, Byronic figure.
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Orson Welles: Where is thou ukulele?
Richard Samuels: I think some asshole... doth... stole it
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Orson Welles: Do you know Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons?" Tarkington was a family friend. The character of Eugene, the inventor, is based on my father who died when I was fifteen. My mother when I was nine. "Ambersons" is about how everything gets taken away from you.
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Orson Welles: Look at us, Runyon. Me without my story and you without your girl. We can't ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Once I stood in Grand Central Station to say goodbye to a pretty girl. I was wild about her. In fact, we decided we couldn't live without each other, and we were to be married. When we came to say goodbye we knew we wouldn't see each other for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it - and she stood there crying. Well, I don't even know where she lives now, or if she is living. If she ever thinks of me at all, she probably imagines I'm still dancing in some ballroom somewhere... Life and money both behave like quicksilver in a nest of cracks. And when they're gone we can't tell where - or what the devil we did with 'em...
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John Houseman: This is an infinitely rewarding partnership, Orson. You go around smashing everything, you disenfranchise every friend, every supporter we have. And then I'm left desperately trying to clean up your mess. Because I am the one who ends up making the apologies, making the corrections, and making the ten thousand phone calls...
Orson Welles: And I'm out acting in "The Shadow" and "The March of Time" and every other piece-of-shit radio show in this city, just to pour my money into this son-of-a-bitch theater that you're supposed to be running.
John Houseman: That I'm 'supposed to be running?' I am killing myself trying to run it!
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Joseph Cotten: Welcome to quadruple-space, kid.
Richard Samuels: What's quadruple space?
Joseph Cotten: You know in a novel, when the main characters are finally about to shtup? They can't describe it or otherwise they can't print the book. They just go, 'He hugged her hard, and they fell into bed.' Period. Quadruple space.
Norman Lloyd: The next paragraph the sun is rising and the milkman is knocking the bottles together.
Joseph Cotten: All the good stuff happens in the quadruple space.
Norman Lloyd: Fertilizer's hoping to make his next thirty years one long quadruple space.
Joseph Cotten: Forty.
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Sonja Jones: Mercury. This is she... Oh, Mr. Ingram, Orson left just two minutes ago... he took an ambulance to beat the traffic... Well, you know, according to Orson there's no law on the books that says you have to be sick to take an ambulance. Of course, that's according to Orson, which probably means it isn't really true but it ought to be...
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Richard Samuels: Well, I wish you luck.
Sonja Jones: I won't need luck. I don't believe in luck.
Richard Samuels: I don't think I do anymore, either. It's kind of a relief, isn't it, not believing in luck?
Sonja Jones: I don't want to keep Mr. Selznick, waiting, do I? How do I look?
Richard Samuels: Like a girl who's going to give me one blindingly beautiful parting kiss.
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Sonja Jones: Orson wants to stay with me tonight.
Richard Samuels: Stay with you tonight?
Sonja Jones: I'm in no position to refuse.
Richard Samuels: What are you talking about?
Sonja Jones: I have to watch out for myself. That's what my whole life has taught me again and again.
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[first lines]
Dr. Mewling: By the year of 1592, Shakespeare was already an actor, and a playwright. Records of how his stage career began have not survived. We do know that in 1594 he joined a theater troupe. Called... anyone remember? Not everyone at once now. The Lord Chamberlain's Men.
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[last lines]
Gretta Adler: You know, uh, the last time we were here, I was thinking to myself, Gretta, you've been living in the city half a year, trying to write, hoping to meet people, and - here I meet a guy I like. I don't - don't worry, I'm not trying to scare you. Just seems like - we have so many of the same interests.
Richard Samuels: Yeah.
Gretta Adler: Exciting time. Because it feels like...
Richard Samuels: Like it's all ahead of us.
Gretta Adler: Yeah.
Man: Hold the doors!
Gretta Adler: Yeah. It's all ahead of us. What do you think?
Richard Samuels: Hmm.
Gretta Adler: Hmm.
[laughs]
Gretta Adler: Possibilities.
Richard Samuels: Yeah. Possibilities.
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Orson Welles: You really are a god created actor Richard. Those weren't just words you see. I recognize 'The Look'.
Richard Samuels: The Look?
Orson Welles: The bone deep understanding that your life is so utterly without meaning that simply to survive you have to reinvent yourself. Because if people can't find you, they can't dislike you. You see if I can be Brutus for 90 minutes tonight; I mean really be him, from the inside out; then for 90 minutes I get this miraculous reprieve from being myself. That's what you see in every great actor's eyes.
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Richard Samuels: All I do know is that whatever it is, acting, writing, music, plays, I just want to be a part of it all.
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Sonja Jones: What are you doing here?
Richard Samuels: I didn't think you'd actually stay with him.
Sonja Jones: I told you what I was doing; I'm not sorry.
[pauses to hail a cab]
Sonja Jones: You've only known me a week. Don't you think your wounded silence is a little melodramatic?
Richard Samuels: You know, sometimes you remember a week for the rest of your life.
Sonja Jones: Well then, let's be grateful we had a week.
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Orson Welles: [seeing new handbill] This is completely inadequate. Very possibly the worst looking thing I've ever seen in my life.
John Houseman: We've just had 50,000 of them printed.
Orson Welles: They're not entirely bad.
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Sonja Jones: He had a personality problem with Orson.
Richard Samuels: Meaning?
Sonja Jones: Meaning he had a personality.
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Sonja Jones: I'm one huge catalog of faults.
Richard Samuels: Oh, name me one fault.
Sonja Jones: My left breast is smaller than my right.
Richard Samuels: You got a ruler?
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Richard Samuels: Think of this as an investment, mother. An investment in my future as some kind of artist.
Grandmother Samuels: Like your Uncle Frank.
Mrs. Samuels: Oh God!
Grandmother Samuels: He never kept a steady job his whole life.
Richard Samuels: This is different. Some day everyone in this town is going to know who I am.
Mrs. Samuels: Oh sure. You'll be the one who didn't graduate from high school.
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Orson Welles: [to standing ovation] How the hell do I top this?
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Joseph Cotten: Go home, kid.
Richard Samuels: This is home.
Me and Orson Welles Quotes
Extended Reading
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