Robert Duvall Quotes

As long as they keep offering me some good parts and so forth – there are some parts out there that fit me pretty well – I’ll keep going for a while.

We either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the Bible.

Everybody likes to win.

I like to do things that I develop from the ground up.

Well, I had a wonderful career.

My father’s people… are from Fairfax in northern Virginia, just across the Mason-Dixon line. So it was an honour to play Lee, he was a great general.

We all have a cradle-to-the-grave journey to make and, in between, what do you do? There’s got to be something hereafter.

I was fortunate in the last century to be in the two biggest hits film-wise, ‘Godfather I’ and ‘Godfather II,’ and ‘Lonesome Dove.’

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

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.’

The cultural contrast I saw between religions… Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. Protestants in general say things to God directly.

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?

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

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.

Well, it’s like my movie, ‘The Apostle.’ Some people in the North don’t get that movie. They think that, in the South, if you don’t shout, you can’t play one of those guys.

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.

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

I am getting some good offers still. Some nice things are coming my way just as they always have, so unless I lose my inspiration or there is too much drool to wipe, I will keep going.

Well, I can’t live without a woman. I have to have a woman, have to have a wife.

I’ve always liked country music. It’s a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.

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.

I had a wonderful career.

To this day, I still think Lonesome Dove is my best part.

Art is competitive.

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.

I love going to black churches, and I love some of these black preachers. The best preacher I ever saw in my life was a 93-year-old in a black church in Hamilton, Virginia. What a preacher!

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.

Around my own friends, I like to mess around.

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

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.

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

Some people say, ‘Do you have any theories on acting?’ And I say, well maybe: I think you can start with zero and end with zero. You don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t have to go for the result.