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

Welles suggests that genuine artistry requires a productive estrangement from prevailing fashions, orthodoxies, and market expectations. To be “out of step” is not mere contrarianism but a stance that preserves independence of judgment: the artist sees what the moment cannot yet see, or refuses what the moment demands. The remark also reflects Welles’s own career—celebrated early, then frequently at odds with studios, budgets, and critical consensus—where innovation often came with professional friction. In this view, art advances by resisting the comfort of contemporaneity; the artist’s task is to challenge the present so that future audiences can recognize what their own time overlooked.