It's no big thing, but you make big things out of little things sometimes.
Robert Duvall
I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.
Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.
We all have a cradle-to-the-grave journey to make and, in between, what do you do? There's got to be something hereafter.
The greatest king of Israel, King David, the author of the Psalms, sent a man out to die in battle so that he could sleep with his wife.
But I think there are more good young actors now than ever. It's a medium that everyone wants to be connected with - it is such a hip medium going into the 21st century.
Way, way, way back I played a little bit, but I am definitely not a golfer. You know, it just takes too much time anyway during the course of the day.
Being a star is an agent's dream, not an actor's.
Very often some of the religious miracle plays you see on television can be very corny, I find. And so simplistic.
To this day, I still think Lonesome Dove is my best part.
Today, everything has to be made by committee, and has to have special effects, but there's always room for good films.
I think there are more good young actors now than ever. It's a medium that everyone wants to be connected with - it is such a hip medium going into the 21st century.
Well, it's like my movie, 'The Apostle.' Some people in the North don't get that movie. They think that, in the South, if you don't shout, you can't play one of those guys.
One thing I like about Argentina, they only cook with salt; that's it.
Stripping away artifice - it's the constant standard I aim for in acting, to approximate life. People talk about being bigger than life - but there's nothing bigger than life.
We either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the Bible.
I love going to black churches, and I love some of these black preachers. The best preacher I ever saw in my life was a 93-year-old in a black church in Hamilton, Virginia. What a preacher!
Everybody likes to win.
I love the smell of juice boxes in the morning.
Look, Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.
When I knew nothing, I thought I could do anything.
The money part is one of the most difficult things. Coppola always said I should do a tango movie. If it hadn't been for him, I don't know where we would have gotten the money.
The cultural contrast I saw between religions... Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. Protestants in general say things to God directly.
If you don't have heroes in the beginning, you don't grow.
You just can't take a crash course to be a tango dancer in a movie.
I'd like to direct again, but that's really hard to get something and raise the money. It's difficult to find just the right thing.
Although it wasn't that easy to do, it was wonderful working with John Wayne.
My father's people... are from Fairfax in northern Virginia, just across the Mason-Dixon line. So it was an honour to play Lee, he was a great general.
Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore.
I wanted to show that crime doesn't pay. If you are saved and accept the Lord, you cannot use that as an excuse to avoid punishment.
What people don't understand about Sarah Palin is that she is a rancher's wife. From Alberta down to Texas I've known women like that: good common sense, bright and vilified by city people.
Some people say, 'Do you have any theories on acting?' And I say, well maybe: I think you can start with zero and end with zero. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to go for the result.
As long as they keep offering me some good parts and so forth - there are some parts out there that fit me pretty well - I'll keep going for a while.
My uncle always said that I could have been a rancher.
Sometimes you don't prepare much. I mean, when I did 'Lonesome Dove' way back I rode horses day and night for like three or four months, and that got me ready for that.
You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you're making a fiction film, it's entertainment, but you want it to be as real as possible.
You have a little bit of feeling for everyone you play.
You get below the Mason-Dixon line and you have some of the best music, culture, the two races, the literature, and it's so rich.
There was nothing wrong with shouting at God.
It's a cyclical thing. When they make one, everyone loves them. Different genres come around in succession. People always welcome the western. It's America's genre.
I'll keep on acting 'til they wipe the drool. I like the business. I like to do different parts and diverse characters. I haven't lost my enthusiasm yet!
I wouldn't mind starting to ride some more if I had a really good horse to just work a little bit with every day.
I like to do things that I develop from the ground up.
I don't have many people showing up at my door. Very few people come out. When they do, I get a little suspicious. I live way up on a hill, way, way back in the country.
I always thought of myself as a later bloomer, so I like some of my work more later than earlier.
Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn't the beginning or end for filmmaking.
High Noon is a pretty corny movie.
God does guide the lives of individuals and does fill them with the Holy Ghost.
Around my own friends, I like to mess around.
I'm better than Olivier.
