"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"
About this Quote
That word is the tell. Coming from an actor and magician of sorts, "illusion" isnt an insult to intimacy; it is his most honest compliment. Welles spent a career proving that what we feel is often inseparable from what is performed: Kane's manufactured legend, the radio panic of War of the Worlds, the elaborate confidence games of F for Fake. He understood how easily human beings accept a story if it meets a hunger. Here the hunger is existential: the desire to be witnessed, to have the solitude briefly contradicted.
The subtext is both tender and wary. Love and friendship are not presented as permanent cures, but as temporary lighting cues that make the set look warmer. That guardedness carries the biography: public genius, private turbulence, relationships strained by ego, ambition, and exile. When Welles calls connection an illusion "for the moment", hes admitting how fragile it feels even when its real.
The intent, ultimately, is to puncture sentimental fantasies without surrendering to nihilism. If togetherness is partly a shared fiction, it is also the finest one we can make.
Quote Details
| Topic | Loneliness |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Someone to Love (film; Henry Jaglom) (Orson Welles, 1987)
Evidence: 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.. Best-supported primary-origin claim located via web search: this line is dialogue spoken by Orson Welles in Henry Jaglom’s film Someone to Love (1987). A secondary but specific research reference (Dr. Mardy’s Dictionary of Metaphorical Quotations) describes it as Welles speaking the line in an unnamed role in the film and dates the film to 1987. Another non-primary quote-curation site (WIST Quotations) similarly attributes it to Someone to Love and notes it was ad-libbed by Welles, but I did not locate a scan of an official screenplay, a published transcript, or an authoritative clip/subtitle file that would let me give a page number or timestamp. The film was produced in 1985 and released/screened in 1987–1988, so the earliest public utterance would be within the film’s first public exhibition (commonly cited as Cannes 1987). Other candidates (1) Wisdom for the Soul (Larry Chang, 2006) compilation97.4% ... We're born alone , we live alone , we die alone . Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Welles, Orson. (2026, February 12). 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. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/were-born-alone-we-live-alone-we-die-alone-only-9412/
Chicago Style
Welles, Orson. "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." FixQuotes. February 12, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/were-born-alone-we-live-alone-we-die-alone-only-9412/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"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." FixQuotes, 12 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/were-born-alone-we-live-alone-we-die-alone-only-9412/. Accessed 26 Feb. 2026.
