Robert Duvall Quotes

I love the smell of juice boxes in the morning.

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

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.

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

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

Never use money to measure wealth, son.

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 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.

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

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

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

If you don't daydream and kind of plan things out in your imagination, you never get there. So you have to start someplace.

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

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.

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

Look, 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.

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.

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.

I'm a man without a corporation.

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

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

There was nothing wrong with shouting at God.

Everybody likes to win.

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

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 am getting some good offers still. Some nice things are coming my way just as they always have, so unless I lose my inspiration or there is too much drool to wipe, I will keep going.

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

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

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

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

As long as they keep offering me some good parts and so forth - there are some parts out there that fit me pretty well - I'll keep going for a while.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Smell that? You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore.

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

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.

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