Robert Redford Quotes

Television tells us only the things it wants to. It still feeds us heroes, it still offers villains. And even though we know better than to always trust it, we still watch.

I have a lot of land. I bought it because I had a very strong feeling. I was in my early twenties, and I had grown up in Los Angeles and had seen that city slide off into the sea from the city I knew as a little kid. It lost its identity - suddenly there was cement everywhere and the green was gone and the air was bad - and I wanted out.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings a certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

I'm not that interested in someone that one-dimensional, but I'm interested in playing somebody that's more complicated.

I learned early that you'd better know what you're talking about. You'd better realize that certain issues are going to be so hot - no matter what reason, what logic you apply to it - you're going to be met with an opposition just because their viewpoint is different, and there's no way they're going to accept your reasoning. Furthermore, they're going to attack you because you will be portrayed as not being credible: "You're an actor. What do you know?"

When I was a kid I was not a good student. I went to the University of Colarado, my grades were poor. I was asked to leave after a year. What I really wanted to do was to be an artist.

What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.

He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.

I guess some mistakes you never stop paying for.

The important thing about a sport is the people who devote their lives to it.

I am passionate. I am political about my country, about what it is, how strong it is, how strong it remains.

Be careful of success; it has a dark side.

I started as an actor in the theater playing a lot of character parts, and suddenly, I found myself in this place where it felt like I was getting locked into a kind of a stereotype, and it did bother me.

Whenever there's chaos, there's ambiguity, and where there's ambiguity, there's fear. And fear gets manipulated.

It's all about greed and money and it's the driving force in Hollywood.

I have a very low regard for cynics. I think it's the beginning of dying.

I look at going to Hollywood as going behind enemy lines. You parachute in, set up the explosion, then fly out before it goes off.

A lot of what acting is is paying attention.

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

Problems can become opportunities when the right people come together.

I was raised in California during the Second World War and into the '50s and everything was fine, everything was great. The sun always shone, everybody looked healthy and wore ties and smoked in restaurants, and there were cars for everybody - except us, because I came from a lower class neighbourhood. But [in France] I realised there was a different point of view, so when I came back to America a year and a half later I was much more focused on my own country culturally and politically.

When I was a kid, nobody told me I was good-looking. I wish they had. I would've had a better time.

I enjoyed working with Dustin Hoffman. That was really fun. He decided that to really be effective as Woodward and Bernstein, considering their differences, we should spend some time together. Because Dustin and I were very different.

I don't know what your childhood was like, but we didn't have much money. We'd go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book.

I was producing things I was acting in, but I had never directed and I felt it was time. I was looking for a piece of material that was about behavior and feelings. When I read Judith Guest's book, I thought, This is it.