Robert Duvall Quotes
Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn't the beginning or end for filmmaking.
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.
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.
Smell that? You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
If you don't daydream and kind of plan things out in your imagination, you never get there. So you have to start someplace.
We're all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth 'til death. We travel between the eternities.
I was fortunate in the last century to be in the two biggest hits film-wise, "Godfather I" and "Godfather II," and "Lonesome Dove".
Listening to critics is like letting Muhammad Ali decide which astronaut goes to the moon.
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.
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!
Some Russian ballet master woman said there's no culture in America, but if you look you can find interesting stuff in this country, don't you think?
If I ended my career, I wouldn't mind doing a TV series if it was a western and I played a mute gunfighter so I wouldn't have to remember lines every week.
There's a lot of ignorance in our business... Everybody's an authority. To have your own vision is rewarding.
It's like kids playing house: 'You play the father, I'll play the mother.' You know, you dress up, you play, they pay, you go home. It's a game - acting's a game.
I hope I left behind a legacy that people will enjoy. But whatever they want to say, I can't predict.
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.
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.
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.
I can always grow a little bit, and try to do something different. So I'm always looking for what's out there - the potential.
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.
When you shift the gear and that little needle on the tach goes into the red and reads 9,000 rpm, that's bad.
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.
I always thought of myself as a later bloomer, so I like some of my work more later than earlier.
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.
Today, everything has to be made by committee, and has to have special effects, but there's always room for good films.
Very often some of the religious miracle plays you see on television can be very corny, I find. And so simplistic.
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.
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.
