Walton Goggins Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I hate to use this as a metaphor, but making movies is kind of like going to war. It's not - but the stamina required and what it takes to tell a story that is this big in scope, you need a general that will bring out the best in you.

I really believe that when you're playing a character that everything is contained in the script. If I'm pulling from things from my own life, then I think I'm being disingenuous to the character and the story.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When you get the call from Quentin Tarantino, it's the call of a lifetime. You don't allow yourself to be vulnerable enough or to be fool enough to expect that phone call to happen, in reality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Success in TV-showmaking is just a matter of being authentic and doing the best you can, and you hope that people watch it and like it. For us [showmakers], we know where our bread is buttered, and we live by the written word of the critic. That's how shows build a critical mass on cable.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.