You can spend your life trying to be popular, and that's a tricky business. You can just try to be true to yourself.

If you think of 'Liberty Valance' or 'The Searchers,' there are moments in there that you'll never, ever forget... And it does not matter what century you are from.

I'm proud of all the movies I've made. They're not sequels, they're not franchises. And the reason I pick my films carefully is that I don't want to spit on my life. I like to think of myself as more than that.

You have to decide if you're going to wilt like a daisy or if you're just going to go forward and live the life that you've been granted.

I can't say I really see much difference between my son and daughters except that my girls will occasionally make me a sandwich and my son won't.

I think there are good men and women in all decades. We've grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

There's nothing more noble than a father and mother making an opportunity for their child, knowing that their life is gonna be hard. There's something incredibly heroic about that.