Walton Goggins Quotes

I don't take a scene or word for granted.

I like storytelling, and I feel more confident as the years have gone on about my ability to do that.

I think I'm much too earnest to be as cool as 'Boyd Crowder'.

I quite like antiques. I like things that are old and the history they bring with them. I would rather fly to Morocco on an $800 ticket and buy a chair for $300 than spend $1,100 on one at Pottery Barn.

Whenever you show up on a set where you haven't been from the beginning - at least myself - I'm kind of quiet. I just watch the politics and how everything unfolds. It's kind of like going to a new high school. You want to see who everyone is before you introduce yourself, really, to kind of make friends. I think any smart person does that in social situations

For violent people to make themselves vulnerable, and then to have that vulnerability be used against them, bad things can happen.

There is something beautiful and permanent in the world, and that is the love that a person can have for another human being.

I'm not good at telling a joke, but I can say a line in a certain way that makes people uncomfortable because they don't know whether to laugh or not, and I love that comedy.

Unfortunately, when you're the king of the hill, there's really only one way to go, and that's down.

Like everybody, I've had a lot of pain in my life and I'm a work in progress. You must have a true desire to see the world from a different point of view, and that comes with growing up.

I do not have the angst and the anxiety of my youth. I've gotten to a place where I'm very comfortable with who I am.

I have a bit of a bucolic kind of upbringing, and so I certainly bring an amalgamation of different people that I've met over the course of my life, especially before moving to Los Angeles, so I guess my childhood was my homework in a lot of ways for Harlan County.

You can go to a history class with one teacher and want to stick a pencil in your throat, and then go to another teacher who is able to contextualize it or deliver the message in a way that you're riveted.

With a lot of the movies that I've done, they've been both dramas and comedies from Shanghai Noon to Billy Bob Thornton's second movie, Daddy and Them, to just a bunch of movies that I have done have been comic, and they're usually from a cynical kind of pessimistic point of view which is probably my sense of humor, and this is a part of myself in everybody that I play.

You know, I'm from the South, and I wasn't interested in perpetuating a stereotypical southern character.

No, but there are people I grew up with from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that would give any person on 'Justified' a run for their money in the scary department.

An actor that tells you that they have real choices between material is, for the most part, lying. There are very few people that have opportunities. But what you do have where I am in my career, is saying no to the things that seem repetitious. For me, I always look for material that allows me to bring my worldview to it. And those opportunities, since the beginning of The Shield, have grown exponentially.

The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.

Tarantino and Jackson is like Scorsese and DeNiro, and their silent communication.

The guy who kills 38 people is not the guy you'd want to have over at Thanksgiving.

We want to see ourselves reflected in our heroes. Unfortunately most of us don't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As an actor, you're afforded these experiences that are once-in-a-lifetime for so many people. More often than not, you can't tell the seasons based on the changing of the leaves, but on the experiences you've had.

If you ever get the opportunity to work with Quentin Tarantino, you had better believe that it will be an experience of extremes.

I find that I have no problem getting a table at a restaurant when I walk in.

I still live my life the way that I want to live it, and people are very respectful of my space, but they also want to chat, and I quite like chatting.

Art is not created in a vacuum. That experience is something to be shared with a group of people, and to be moved in that way.

I never fancied myself having a prejudice towards people with tattoos. I personally don't have any and I don't think that I do, but I do see that people treat me differently with tattoos. People get out of my way.

T I was doing Predators, this new movie for FOX simultaneously, and this character that I play in the movie is "Walter Stands," and I had a plethora of ink all up and down my skin.Once you have ink on your body, how it informs you as an actor, and you kind of get in that space and occupy that space of that character, when you're without them, when I'm just Walton Goggins in the world and I'm without my tattoos, I feel a little naked.

'The Portrait of Dorian Grey' beautifully articulates how the altruistic part of ourselves clashes with our essentially narcissistic state.

I listen to music cinematically. I think about music and how it would make me feel when it's put to an image, a moving image, and I love it.

I think I've made a career out of making despicable people likable.

But probably my favorite music, believe it or not, is sad music.

I wrote about wasting time, which I suppose is a part of the great human journey. We're supposed to wallow, to go through the desert without water for a long time so that when we finally drink it, we'll truly need it and we won't spill a drop. It's about being present.

I really enjoy what I do, and I'm very grateful to be given an opportunity to do it. That's one thing that people can say about me.

It's about something that I'm extremely passionate about: exploring other cultures, how Americans are perceived by other cultures and how we perceive other cultures through our worldview. I travel whenever I get an opportunity to do so, and I think this country is ready for a show on television that is bilingual and really puts front and center another culture, both as the protagonist and the antagonist.

I've had a great career. I've had a great life. I am truly blessed by my working experiences.

Acting is a child's game. It's your willingness to suspend one reality and substitute it for another. That reality lives and breathes in your imagination. The actors that I want to be like exercise that way of thinking, and that's kind of what I do.

I'm kind of the funny guy that hopefully kind of wins your heart if I did my job.

I try to leave a light footprint. I'm involved with Global Green, which aims to educate people about sustainable building and the greening of schools. I try to be aware about the consumption of unnecessary things in a consumptive culture.

I think Hollywood sees so many parts of America through a very narrow prism. The South is no exception. And those stereotypes, while sometimes true, are exaggerated for me to the point of boredom.

I take it as a real compliment that people believe that I can in some ways mine the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the somewhat off-center - psychologically speaking - people in our society, and bring a real humanity to them, and make people see what would otherwise be a person that you would hate. Find a reason to love them and see the world from their point of view.

Maybe when you're alone or no one's looking, you dare to think, "Maybe someday I could get to work with somebody like Quentin Tarantino." For me, it happened. And it didn't just happen once, it's happened twice.

Sadly, in this country - maybe this is in the history of the world, really - it's the urban experience versus the bucolic experience. And it is different, but therein lies the slow progression of democracy. We are a melting pot.

I aimlessly travel, meaning I have no agenda other than to get small in the world, be quiet and observe people.

I'm drawn to villains that are three-dimensional and raw and that I can kind of see in my own life.

Quentin [Taranino] will say, "We've got it, but we're gonna do it one more time. Why?" And then, the entire cast and crew chimes in and says, "Because we love making movies!" He is a person who celebrates this form of expression, and it is evident in his movies, his conversations, his extensive knowledge about the history of what we do, and the actors and crew that he assembles.

My heroes are Robert Duvall, Forest Whitaker, Ed Harris, Tommy Lee Jones, Anthony Hopkins and Sean Penn.

Whenever you show up on a set where you haven't been from the beginning - at least myself - I'm kind of quiet. I just watch the politics and how everything unfolds.