Kevin Costner Quotes

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'm getting those familiar feelings, and I'm just going to enjoy the process of getting to know someone again.

I know I have this level of celebrity, of fame, international, national, whatever you want to call it, but it's a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you're in the middle of another famous person's life and you think to yourself, 'How the hell did I get famous? What is this some weird club that we're in?'

Westerns aren't about the gunfight, even though it has to be there at one point. It's not what they're about, at least the good ones. It's about the drama. It's about the resourcefulness of men and women.

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.

It's nice to be wanted in almost any capacity.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love, especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on, we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them, held their hand, looked in their eyes, been there.

I deal with pressure. I have a tendency to probably be at my best under pressure.

I wait and take on projects that I think can work.

I will never forget what happened here tonight.people I went to school with will never forget.

I've always been distracted when somebody is coming after me and saying, "You're the only person who can play this part."

I didn't realize Toronto was so beautiful. Everywhere you go you see beautiful architecture.

Conventional wisdom can get us into so much trouble, especially as artists.

I think if you want to make a good sports movie, you've got to cut down on the sports. You have to make it about people. You can't try to impress people with your knowledge and the X and O's and all the details and the technicalities.

I haven't tried to buffer myself. I like rolling the dice.

It was an experience of a lifetime to sit only a few feet away from him [Castro] and watch him relive an experience he lived as a very young man.

We really don't rest if we think our kids are drifting, or if we think they don't have the right work ethic. It drives us crazy. Because we ultimately want them to succeed and, until they do, we feel in some way that something is not complete.

When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman's and it didn't bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors.

It's such a cool thing in life to get what it is you want. Most of the time we don't, but occasionally we do.

Cowboy movies aren't supposed to be in vogue. I still like them. You know, I'm still out there pitching the hell out of them.

The western will always be here. And it just depends on how good you make one. And one movie doesn't kill it. And one movie doesn't preserve it. It's storytelling. It's a very American thing. I'll continue to do it.

When you draw a western correctly, you create such drama, such dilemma that you think you almost don't want to admit who you might have been.

You just do the things that you love and see if other people can like them too.

I've never changed my approach to acting. I've always felt like I've gotten better. I think that all of us can get better. I feel like, in my acting, I'm better than I was three pictures ago. I think about it. I'm a slow study. It takes me a long time to grasp the material, in order to perform it. But when I come to the set, on the first day, I know the whole movie. That's why I have to start early.

A good idea is something like an emotion, you just can't keep it in.

When I see my children, and when I see the people who value me, I know how lucky I am.

I am a really writer-oriented actor.

When I make a film I'm away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say, I love his movies, I love his choices-because he loved them.

I think there's true drama in the formation of everything that we know and are standing on the shoulders of.

I have seen soldiers panic at the first sight of battle, and a squire pulling arrows from his body to fight and save his dying horse. Nobility is not a birthright, but is defined by one's actions.

Broken people say awful things and do incredibly absurd things.

I don't go against the grain because I'm a contrary person.

I think I just wanted to work when I finally came to Hollywood. That's what it was. I wanted to get a job, and then I wanted to get the second one.

I'm not defining my band by other people's music, but by my own.

When I do a Western, I often wonder what I would have really done in that situation.

Failure doesn't kill you... it increases your desire to make something happen.

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

We're at a point in history where everyone needs to pay attention to politics. Too much is at stake for us to be apathetic.

The movies helped define how I should be as a person.

I've been around where I knew other actors were going to steal the scene, and I don't compete with them.

I want to be a part of something, and when we define movies now based on how they do on the weekend. We live in a society of "thumbs up, thumbs down."

True movies will never be measured by how much they make - they'll be measured by how they make you feel.

If I had a choice of having a woman in my arms or shooting a bad guy on a horse, I'd take the horse. It's a lot more fun

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away.

We stand our best chance of leaving a legacy to those who want to learn, our children, by standing firm. In matters of style, hey, swing with the stream. But in matters of principle, you need to stand like a rock.

You know, what if everybody's wrong in life? And so you have to live your life yourself.

My whole life has been instinctual for me. I wouldn't do well in the computer world.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.