Orson Welles Quotes

When I very first started out, I had that arrogance of youth.

If anything I was probably loved and praised too much as a child. I think that's why I can't accept any compliments.

At 20, you're cocky and you think you can rule the world, and you get it all wrong.

When I was in my twenties, I thought I was bulletproof.

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

My parents never told me I was beautiful, and for one very good reason. I wasn't. When your child is a tubby, bespectacled little oddity, as I was, it's important not to give them false expectations.

And at 19, you think you rule the world, and you can control things. And a lot of times, you don't.

You know when you're young, you have this unbelievable stupidity and arrogance and ignorance all mixed in?

When you're young, when you've never done anything very much on your own, you imagine that it won't be so hard.

Young people have to learn in a cocoon filled with false optimism. Unlike their parents and grandparents, they grow up with very little sense of the pitiless passage of time.

I was too ignorant to realize, "Oh, this will be difficult."

If you're going to exude naivete, you can't really... walk out there like it's a Sting show. You can't be that well put together and then have this kind of innocent bravado.

I am an only child, and I guess was spoiled by my parents.

I think I was lucky in that I wasn't one of those girls who are told they are pretty the whole time. I never got that. Nor did I ever obsess about my looks as a teenager.

When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know.

A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.

I had parents who were incredibly loving and nurturing and always made me feel beautiful, so I never really questioned that.

At 17, we all think we know what we're doing.

Illusions of grandeur are not the same as visions of greatness.

It's very hard not to let fame affect you because you are continually being told how good you are. After a while you begin to think there must be some truth in it because all those people can't be wrong.

I think that giving mindless praise is ridiculous. But I understand why parents do it. They want their kids to feel good about themselves. But parents are never going to teach their children true, positive self esteem by praising everything they do.

I've never been scared, but I'm very naive.

I was the worst actor, but here's the cool thing about it: I had no idea.

I had lived with my mother in anger and love - I suppose most daughters do - but my children only knew her in one way: As the lady who thought they were smarter than Albert Einstein. As the lady who thought they wrote better than William Shakespeare. As the lady who thought every picture they drew was a Rembrandt.

I am proud of my immaturity and political inexperience.