Robert Duvall Quotes

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

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

The greatest king of Israel, King David, the author of the Psalms, sent a man out to die in battle so that he could sleep with his wife.

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.

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

One thing I like about Argentina, they only cook with salt; that's it.

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

Never use money to measure wealth, son.

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'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.

I love the smell of juice boxes in the morning.

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

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.

The beginning and the end of the tango is the walk.

When I knew nothing, I thought I could do anything.

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

I was fortunate in the last century to be in the two biggest hits film-wise, "Godfather I" and "Godfather II," and "Lonesome Dove".

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

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.

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

Listening to critics is like letting Muhammad Ali decide which astronaut goes to the moon.

The tango is a very interior dance. It's not an exterior - it's not flashy and all over the floor. It's a very interior dance when you see the old guys dance in the clubs. I learned everything from the old guys in the clubs.

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.

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

To this day, I still think Lonesome Dove is my best part.

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

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

If you don't have heroes in the beginning, you don't grow.

The only thing that might make me stay in bed would be fear. Once I get rest, then I can overcome the fear of a given day and then I'm ready. I'm ready to go. Not that I always have that fear, but sometimes that's the only thing that would keep me in bed more than just the laziness.

I love working in Texas anywhere.

There was nothing wrong with shouting at God.

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

Some Russian ballet master woman said there's no culture in America, but if you look you can find interesting stuff in this country, don't you think?

God does guide the lives of individuals and does fill them with the Holy Ghost.

I'll keep on acting 'til they wipe the drool. I like the business. I like to do different parts and diverse characters. I haven't lost my enthusiasm yet!

If I ended my career, I wouldn't mind doing a TV series if it was a western and I played a mute gunfighter so I wouldn't have to remember lines every week.

I can always grow a little bit, and try to do something different. So I'm always looking for what's out there - the potential.

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.

When you shift the gear and that little needle on the tach goes into the red and reads 9,000 rpm, that's bad.

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.

It's like kids playing house: 'You play the father, I'll play the mother.' You know, you dress up, you play, they pay, you go home. It's a game - acting's a game.

When I'm at home in Virginia, I become more hermit-like. I like my own home.

I wouldn't mind starting to ride some more if I had a really good horse to just work a little bit with every day.

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 hope I left behind a legacy that people will enjoy. But whatever they want to say, I can't predict.

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

High Noon is a pretty corny movie.

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

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