It is easier to get an actor to be a cowboy than to get a cowboy to be an actor.

You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart.

Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes.

I am... a mushroom; On whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.

I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.

I like, as a director and a spectator, simple, direct, frank films. Nothing disgusts me more than snobbism, mannerism, technical gratuity... and, most of all, intellectualism.

When in doubt, make a western.

Who better than an Irishman can understand the Indians, while still being stirred by tales of the US cavalry?

Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.

To be quite blunt, I make pictures for money, to pay the rent.There are some great artists in the business. I am not one of them.

Tell us, pray, what devil This melancholy is, which can transform Men into monsters.

Joblessness gives you time to grow

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please-you can never have both.

I was perceived to be a first- to third-rounder. I kind of had a tough junior year and fell to the fifth round. At that time, it was motivational.

Run from being good. Chase being great.

It is those very things that we are most afraid to do that provide the greatest liberation and growth for us.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

You have to do something bad to do something good.

When in doubt, err on the side of generosity.

It's hard to say when or if we will actually arrive at that place called 'post-racial', or, better yet, post-racism.

Oft in my way have I stood still, though but a casual passenger, so much I felt the awfulness of life.