I made a film where nobody got shot and nobody went to see it.

I created 'The Westerner' because of anger - anger at never-miss sheriffs, always-right marshalls, whitewashed gunfighters ... anger at TV's quick-draw tin gods who stand behind a tin star or ten cents' worth of righteous anger and justify their skill and slaughter with a self-conscious grin or a minute's worth of bad philosophy.

The end of a picture is always an end of a life.

The western is a universal frame within which it's possible to comment on today.

The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws - everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he's only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don't say to me we're not violent.

I'm a student of violence because I'm a student of the human heart.

I regard everything with irony, including the face I see in the mirror when I wake up in the morning.