Robert Duvall Quotes

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.

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

There's a lot of ignorance in our business ... Everybody's an authority. To have your own vision is rewarding.

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.

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.

When I'm at home in Virginia, I become more hermit-like. I like my own home.

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

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

You have a little bit of feeling for everyone you play.

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

I was fortunate in the last century to be in the two biggest hits film-wise, 'Godfather I' and 'Godfather II,' and 'Lonesome Dove.'

When you shift the gear and that little needle on the tach goes into the red and reads 9,000 rpm, that's bad.

Listening to critics is like letting Muhammad Ali decide which astronaut goes to the moon.

When I knew nothing, I thought I could do anything.

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

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

You gotta be careful with message movies. People say "What do you want people to take away from it?" I always say its totally individual.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I like the good feeling movies.

The only thing that might make me stay in bed would be fear. Once I get rest, then I can overcome the fear of a given day and then I'm ready. I'm ready to go. Not that I always have that fear, but sometimes that's the only thing that would keep me in bed more than just the laziness.

There's no right or wrong just truthful or untruthful.

It suits him because way back many years ago when Nikita Mikhalkov, the great Russian director, came, I said, "I want you to meet somebody." So I get Billy Bob from Malvern, Arkansas and Nikita Mikhalkov from Moscow. It's just two big talents meet. We sat for two or three hours and talked. It was great. He's the real deal, this guy.

But for me, the challenge is how you turn a character into behavior. Once the director says 'action', you just try to live between those two worlds.

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.

If you piss your pants, you can only stay warm for so long.

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

The beginning and the end of the tango is the walk.

If you don't have heroes in the beginning, you don't grow.

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

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

We're all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth 'til death. We travel between the eternities.

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 love the smell of juice boxes in the morning.

Around my own friends, I like to mess around.

I'm better than Olivier.

You obviously don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer or you don't have to be a dictator to play a dictator. So, you're an actor. You come up with whatever you come up with to play that part.

When you dance tango fast, you have to think slow.

One thing I like about Argentina, they only cook with salt; that's it.

Seeing your name on the list for KP or guard duty when you're in the Army is like reading a bad review.

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

The idea is that one's temperament improves with age; that you learn to deal better with people and become more benevolent and loving. That's not necessarily true. I try to stay loose but sometimes the best thing to do is get yourself away and take a good nap.

The one you fight with the most is always the one who's most like you.

A young actor once asked me, What do you do between jobs? I said, Hobbies, hobbies, and more hobbies.

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

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 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.

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

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.

Not every successful man is a good father. But every good father is a successful man.

I try not to look for messages in films.

The tango is a very interior dance. It's not an exterior - it's not flashy and all over the floor. It's a very interior dance when you see the old guys dance in the clubs. I learned everything from the old guys in the clubs.

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.

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.

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.

I take a vitamin every day; it's called a steak.

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.

Sometimes directors will hire you and say, 'Oh, we love your work.' And then they start to tell you how to do it. I say, 'Hey, man, back off. You hired me to do it. Let me do it.'