Quotes By Robert Duvall

Sometimes directors will hire you and say, 'Oh, we love your work.' And then they start to tell you how to do it. I say, 'Hey, man, back off. You hired me to do it. Let me do it.'

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!

I love working in Texas anywhere.

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.

The most solitary I ever felt was when I was living in New York. I used to live in Enrico Caruso's old apartment, and I had a special staircase that took me up to the roof. There was nobody up there.

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.

Too many people think that economics is this subject that should wait until the university level. But it can't wait that long.

Around my own friends, I like to mess around.

I always thought of myself as a later bloomer, so I like some of my work more later than earlier.

I'd like to direct again, but that's really hard to get something and raise the money. It's difficult to find just the right thing.

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.

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.

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?

You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you're making a fiction film, it's entertainment, but you want it to be as real as possible.

Although it wasn't that easy to do, it was wonderful working with John Wayne.

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

What drives me is I love my profession. I love to do it.

I'm getting good offers, as good as ever sometimes. I just finished a thing with Billy Bob Thornton that was the most unique part I've ever played in my life, in the most unique project.

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.

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.

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

It's no big thing, but you make big things out of little things sometimes.

I always considered myself as a character actor. I always try to be versatile to show different sides of human experience.

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

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.

Everybody likes to win.

I wanted to show that crime doesn't pay. If you are saved and accept the Lord, you cannot use that as an excuse to avoid punishment.

Look, Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.

I try not to look for messages in films.

Sometimes you don't prepare much. I mean, when I did 'Lonesome Dove' way back I rode horses day and night for like three or four months, and that got me ready for that.