Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck.

I'd come out of the army after five years as a medic. I was a medical administrator and we ran hospitals, and I was a Captain in the army at the end, in 1945.

The big secret in acting is listening to people.

When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.

If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?

Well, I've maybe gotten 200 requests for interviews about Marilyn, and I just decided I'm gonna do my own.

I don't act to live. I live to act.

I've learned that life is very tricky business: Each person needs to find what they want to do in life and not be dissuaded when people question them.

Recipe? Recipe? We don' need no stinkin' recipe.

But Clint I love, because Clint was my mentor. I knew nothing about making an Italian movie.

My first Western was called The Magnificent Seven.

An honest and wise man is always a very simple man.

The greatest act of courage is to be and to own all of who you are — without apology, without excuses, without masks to cover the truth of who you are.

An author really ought to have nothing but flowers in the room where he works.

The secret to my own happiness, my own good future, is within my own hands. I must not miss that opportunity!

Reality gets created through acts of observation

The best thing you can do is just keep busy, keep working hard, so you're not dwelling on it all the time. Work is the best antidote for sorrow.

Afghanistan has moved forward and Afghanistan will defend itself. And the progress that we have achieved, the Afghan people will not allow it to be put back or reversed.

In fact UN is more of a galaxy of organisations and agencies than one machine.

The people in Hollywood are fabulously stupid.

We are very lucky really, because we can create our own reality, John [Lennon] and me, but we know the important thing is to communicate with other people.