Being a star is an agent's dream, not an actor's.

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.

Around my own friends, I like to mess around.

Very often some of the religious miracle plays you see on television can be very corny, I find. And so simplistic.

I'm better than Olivier.

God does guide the lives of individuals and does fill them with the Holy Ghost.

Today, everything has to be made by committee, and has to have special effects, but there's always room for good films.

I love the smell of juice boxes in the morning.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn't the beginning or end for filmmaking.

We either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the Bible.

I always thought of myself as a later bloomer, so I like some of my work more later than earlier.

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.

You just can't take a crash course to be a tango dancer in a movie.

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

Too many people think that economics is this subject that should wait until the university level. But it can't wait that long.

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.

Although it wasn't that easy to do, it was wonderful working with John Wayne.

My uncle always said that I could have been a rancher.

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.

I like to do things that I develop from the ground up.

There was nothing wrong with shouting at God.

It's no big thing, but you make big things out of little things sometimes.

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!

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.

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.

High Noon is a pretty corny movie.

To this day, I still think Lonesome Dove is my best part.

Being a star is an agent's dream, not an actor's.

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.

Everybody likes to win.

I always considered myself as a character actor. I always try to be versatile to show different sides of human experience.

I always figure from the cradle to the grave, we all have our individual journeys, and maybe my journey was a positive one and I accomplished certain things without stepping on too many toes.

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.

I hope I left behind a legacy that people will enjoy. But whatever they want to say, I can't predict.

I like the good feeling movies.

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!

I try not to look for messages in films.

I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, I can't live without a woman. I have to have a woman, have to have a wife.