Clint Eastwood Quotations | Page 3

Once a man has some money, peace begins to sound good to him.

Michael Moore and I actually have a lot in common. We both appreciate living in a country where there's free expression. But Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera, I'll kill you. I mean it.

Nobody, I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hot dog.

Well, if you're waitin' for a woman to make up her mind, you may have a a long wait.

There's a lot of young guys coming along, but I'd like to say to the various financiers, don't forget the senior guys. The senior guys and gals are there, willing to do their best work for you.

Children teach you that you can still be humbled by life, that you learn something new all the time. That's the secret to life, really: never stop learning. It's the secret to career. I'm still working because I learn something new all the time. It's the secret to relationships. Never think you've got it all.

Let's take the work seriously, and not ourselves seriously.

I don't wanna need you because I can't have you.

Men must know their limitations.

Listen, punk. To me you're nothin' but dogshit, you understand? And a lot of things can happen to dogshit. It can be scraped up with a shovel off the ground. It can dry up and blow away in the wind. Or it can be stepped on and squashed. So take my advice and be careful where the dog shits ya!

A Love like this happens but once in a lifetime

If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it's an art form or whether it's just in life, it comes off---you don't have anything to prove; you can just be who you are.

It's not about you. It's about them.

What do you want me to tell Romney? I can't tell him to do that. I can't tell him to do that to himself. You're crazy. You're absolutely crazy. You're getting as bad as Biden.

The reason I don't retire is that I learn something new every day. The brain has to be exercised the same as the rest of the body. It's about expanding, constantly pushing yourself.

To me, life is like the back nine in golf. Sometimes you play better on the back nine. You may not be stronger, but hopefully you're wiser. And if you keep most of your marbles intact, you can add a note of wisdom to the coming generation.

Westerns. A period gone by, the pioneer, the loner operating by himself, without benefit of society. It usually has something to do with some sort of vengeance; he takes care of the vengeance himself, doesn't call the police. Like Robin Hood. It's the last masculine frontier. Romantic myth. I guess, though it's hard to think about anything romantic today. In a Western you can think, Jesus, there was a time when man was alone, on horseback, out there where man hasn't spoiled the land yet.

Hollywood, as everyone knows, glamorizes physical courage. . . . if I had to define courage myself, I wouldn't say it's about shooting people. I'd say it's the quality that stimulates people, that enables them to move ahead and look beyond themselves.

Being comfortable is over-rated.

I try to stick to a vegan diet heavy on fruit and vegetables.

Every man has got to know his limitations.

I'm a great supporter of transcendental meditation. I've been using it for almost 40 years now - and I think it's a great tool for anyone to have, to be able to utilize as a tool for stress. Stress, of course, comes with almost every business. I think there are enough studies out there that show that TM is something that could benefit anybody. It's a great system to use. Otherwise, why would I've been doing it for all these years, for almost half of my life?

I can't do that to myself!

Maybe I`m getting to the age when I`m starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now. You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot - both on the Right and the Left.

I was drafted during the Korean War.

I haven't been very active in politics.

Every story has its demands.

I don't mind telling a dark side.

Society is at odds with itself.

The cruelty of nature is you have to work out harder when you get older ... It should be the other way around: Work out hard when you're a kid you should be able to coast when you get older. But unfortunately you have to do more to stay in the same position.

Once you finish a film, it doesn't belong to you anymore - it belongs to the audience to interpret it the way they feel like interpreting.

The best part of aging in this business is losing that obsession about work and being able to spend a little more time with family.

The main thing is, you just want to have your place in history. You hope that people will look back on it in 15, 20, 30 and beyond years, and say, "That was an exciting film."

I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?

I like the inspiration of the first take.

If you're afraid to take risks in anything in life, it's just boredom.

I guess it's like trying to put through the flat tax, which is probably my favorite one of all.... if we did pass it, all of a sudden, what do you have? You have the whole tax system run by a little old lady on a home computer, doing the work of all these thousands of bureaucrats and accountants. Passing that would be amazing, wouldn't it?

I don't like showing the technique. I don't like people who say, "Here, I'm going to act, but first I have to bounce off this wall." If you have to bounce off the wall, do it by yourself. Don't feature the technique. My old drama coach used to say, "Don't just do something, stand there." Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.

I do believe in self-help.

I'm not a chick-flick enthusiast.

If you get a certain amount of notoriety for doing something, and you can stick to that type of project for the rest of your life and make a decent living, I think you still have a responsibility to stretch. Flexibility is what keeps you alive.

You have to trust your instincts. There is a moment when an actor has it, and he knows it.

Self-respect leads to self-discipline.

I was kind of a little disappointed when they started building a competition between Marty (Martin Scorsese) and me. I have the greatest respect for him and all the films he's done over the years.

What I think the mentor gets is the great satisfaction of helping somebody along, helping somebody take advantage of an opportunity that maybe he or she did not have.

The reason I still work at this stage of life is because I enjoy learning something new each day.

As you get older, you change certain things.

I don't know how everybody else feels, but I just long for reality rather than these made-up things.

Acting is an animal thing, not an intellectual thing.

I had one well known director who kept saying, "Now Clint, this is what ...." And I'd say, "I know. I read the script. I'm the one who cast you as the director. Let me show you and you'll correct me if I'm wrong."

I've never been on a movie where they play five-dollar Friday. I must not be very observant.

If the director's a communist, whatever, he's a communist. All I care is that he directs. For the actor, the same thing. All you really care is that he comes in and performs.

When anybody gives you an award, it could be wrong. You've just got to bear that it mind and go ahead and enjoy it. Like Morgan [Freeman] says, it's a pat on the back, so great you'll take it and then move on.

There is an interesting idea: almost everybody's fascinated by the perpetrator of a crime; very few people study what happens to people for the rest of their lives, and how it affects not only that particular character but other characters around him as well.

Am I aging? The pros and the cons? Well, you know a lot more, at least until the time you start forgetting it all. Actually, aging can be a fun process, to some degree.

I would like to be interpreted as a liberal libertarian, like leave everybody alone and let them do their own thing.

There are so many parallels in society today [with era of J. Edgar Hoover ] that you can use, whether it's the head of a studio or the head of an organization, a major newspaper, a major factory or company, of people who stay too long, maybe, and overstay their usefulness.

I'm just naturally gravitating towards different things. As you mature, different subject matters. And as you're older, you can't play as many parts, or you shouldn't be playing the parts that you used to play. But also there's the opportunity to play parts that you couldn't have.

You definitely do not do films for that particular reason. You do them for yourself, for your satisfaction of creating this thing with characters and watching these characters take on real life - that's all you care about.

You get to a certain age and you're just glad to be there. I don't know what to add to that. It's fun. You have to be a realist, so you try to look for roles that are within the age you are.

Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers.

[ J. Edgar]Hoover, I'm sure, felt that he was right in everything he did and even the things that we don't like about his character.

I have great respect for the FBI, and I know that there have been some rumors lately that the FBI was disenchanted because of what we were doing in story, or doing a certain take: that's not true. Actually the FBI was tremendously enthusiastic about us doing [ J. Edgar Hoover ] film.

I always felt blessed that I was able to make a living in a profession [acting] that not a lot of people can make a living at, and I was able to do something I liked, rather than be in a job that I hated.

I don't watch a lot of films. I'm usually involved in making them.

The casting is the most important thing. If you cast a picture really well a lot of things take care of themselves. You get actors that like to give a lot to the role and who appreciate the role on the same level that you do. If you miscast it, you're working an uphill battle a little bit and maybe you can come out okay but you can't always come out great.

A talented executive would be somebody who knows how to surround themselves with a lot of people that will make him look good. You could say that about a politician or you could say that about a head of a major corporation or what have you. The people you surround yourself with are very important.

Over my career I played some badass characters. So, people sometimes think I should have a .44 magnum. But that's not true, I don't have that. But I do fire them and I do enjoy target shooting and all that sort of thing. I'm not much of a hunter. I don't like killing animals, but I love to shoot.

You change as the years go by. The more knowledge you get, the more things change in your life and circumstances change.

I just feel that I enjoy the work more than I ever have... or just as much certainly. I enjoy making films behind the camera equally to making them in front of the camera on all those years. I just enjoy it, that's all. I've been lucky enough to work in a profession that I have really liked and so I figured I'd just continue until someone hits me over the head and says "get out".

I've lived through the shooting of movie, the editing and every other process along the way, so it's not for me to really judge it. I'll probably look at it again five years from now to get a fresh feel for it.

I like a drama. And I think that's the basis of good films, or good plays, is to have a nice drama.

The story [for the western genre] is everything. Whether it's a book or a screenplay, the story drives everything. And if you just go out and try to make one by putting on boots and jumping on a horse and riding off... If you don't have the material, the characters and the things to overcome and conflicts that give life to drama, you don't have it.

Everybody always feels that they're right even if they're wrong and that's what a whole actor's career is built around rationalizing your way into whatever character you're playing.

Acting to me is a very organic art form and you just go and do it. And I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed. Let me bring in what I want to bring in, and if something's wrong, just tell me about it and I'll make some corrections or adjustments. And that's what I do.

With people in high office, the old - you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.

I'd been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years. And then, in 1970, when I first started directing, I if I could pull this off, I can some day just move in back of the camera and stay there.

In America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience.

I don't write. I usually look for material by other people. Sometimes I change things or adapt things but I don't write from scratch. I wish I had that ability.

If you've done what you intended and if nobody tampered with it, then it's yours. And if people don't like it, then they just don't agree with you on that subject matter, and that's life.

All I know is there's thousands of people in the Academy and a lot of them, the majority of them, haven't won Oscars.A lot of people are crying, I guess.

Nobody wants to make something that displeases people, but once you make a film, that's out of your control and you can't think about that. You just have to follow your head and make sure that you're satisfied by putting down what you intended.

We don't even know who's in the Academy.

When you think of a particular director, you think you would have liked to be with them on one particular film and not necessarily on some other one.

Hitchcock used to believe that if there were three or four memorable scenes in a film that would be enough to drive it, but I don't know if that's true or not.

I guess a great movie would be one that has the most great moments in it.

Don Siegel last advice to me was 'Don't short yourself.' He said the tendency is when an actor's directing is to kind of you want to work on everybody else but you're going to short yourself. He said, take the time to do a good job with yourself so that you're satisfied with it.

Directing is more like you're being a psychologist and you're kind of analyzing the situation and evaluating each person for their idiosyncrasies.

The only reason I ever thought about retiring from the front part of the camera as opposed to the back is sometimes you think, "How many roles are there for someone my age?"

At certain points if your life, you like doing more. I'm not sure what causes it or for what reasons; you just do it.

There's something about the first time an actor runs the material over his or her face, when they kind of run it through their eyes and you see the thing and there is little imperfections in it and not every line is delivered perfectly, and it doesn't have that mechanical feeling.

The main thing is to do each project the way you want, and if they find an audience, that's terrific. And if they don't, there's nothing you can do anyway, so don't let it concern you that much. An awful lot of good movies have done badly and an awful lot of bad movies have done very well. There are no real rhymes or reasons for it. Sometimes the stars don't always align right. But if you've done the best you can, you feel pretty good about it.

I am not a regret type person. I don't believe in regrets. Lots of things you would do differently if you'd do it again, but you don't do it again, so you don't think about it. But that goes for life in general. You're only dealing with the knowledge you have at that time.

I don't necessarily look for dark themes; they just seem to appear.

I always revered people that I thought had an idea and proceeded through with it. I guess I've been that way since the day I called my father and told him I was going to study acting and maybe try to see if I could do well with that, and he told me: "Don't do that. You don't want to do that, that's just dream stuff. Get a legitimate job and move forward."

I had always planned when I started directing in 1970 that after a few years I'd get tired of looking at myself on the screen and say: "Hey, let's not do that any more." But then every once in a while something pops up. I'm not saying it won't happen again but probably the odds get less as you set yourself for roles that fit your age group.

If you feel like you've got something to offer you should do it while the iron's hot.

A lot of people regret, because we live in a society that reveres being at the prime of life and everything, but you have certain primes at certain times, and mine happens to be...

I believe that everybody, whether you believe in the afterlife or the chance of a near-death experience and you come back and you see someone [on the other side] - whether that has happened or not, I don't know, but certainly everyone has thought about it at some point or another in time. It's a fantasy that if there is anything out there like that, it would be just terrific, but that remains to be seen.

I just kind of had my own impressions growing up with Hoover as a heroic figure in the 40s - actually the 30s, 40s, and 50s and beyond - but this was all prior to the information age so we didn't know about Hoover except what was usually in the papers, and this was fun, because this was a chance to go into it [ during filming 'J. Edgar Hoover' ]