Top 160 Quotes & Sayings by Kevin Costner

I enjoy sports. I get a real joy from playing sports but I don't look for those movies. Oliver Stone wanted to know if I would do Any Given Sunday and it just didn't appeal to me.

I wait and take on projects that I think can work.

You have to decide if you're going to wilt like a daisy or if you're just going to go forward and live the life that you've been granted.

There's real drama in performing live. You never know how it's going to be.

If it's going to be wrecked, I want to make sure I wreck it.

Failure doesn't kill you... it increases your desire to make something happen.

I think these movies are as much for people of that time as for people who weren't born. For people who weren't born, they see how leaders must act under a crisis situation, not trying to be re-elected or not trying to check polls, that they go from their gut check.

I like American history.

We stand our best chance of leaving a legacy to those who want to learn, our children, by standing firm. In matters of style, hey, swing with the stream. But in matters of principle, you need to stand like a rock.

I try to please myself. I don't try to anticipate what people want to see.

I think there's true drama in the formation of everything that we know and are standing on the shoulders of.

I know I have this level of celebrity, of fame, international, national, whatever you want to call it, but it's a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you're in the middle of another famous person's life and you think to yourself, 'How the hell did I get famous? What is this some weird club that we're in?'

You have to try to dismiss the loudness of cynicism. It's certainly going to come.

There are a lot of things that come to bear on movies now that I don't think are good for movies. They're trying to appeal to the biggest demographic and, when they do that, you sometimes flatten out.

I work for the public, for the people who are paying to go to the cinema, rather than for the critics.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love, especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on, we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them, held their hand, looked in their eyes, been there.

If you think of 'Liberty Valance' or 'The Searchers,' there are moments in there that you'll never, ever forget... And it does not matter what century you are from.

You have to pick the stories that you want to be involved with and the end game is you'd like to be a part of a hit. But I think your moral obligation is to follow your own heart.

I split my time between Santa Barbara and Aspen. I live on a pretty fast horse.

If you're going to tear down a hero, you should never forget that you're tearing down someone else's hero. You're tearing down somebody else's son. You might have to face her one day.

I've had some movies that have been ridiculed, but that's OK with me. I don't feel that really defines me. Should I change who I am to be popular?

I was sucked into this vortex of a very conservative upbringing.

What are we blaming? Is this Vietnam? We made a movie, it didn't make much money. I'm gonna be really happy if somebody watches it in 10 years' time and really enjoys it.

Being a celebrity is probably the closest to being a beautiful woman as you can get.

When I make a film I'm away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say, I love his movies, I love his choices-because he loved them.

I'm a big fan of dreams. Unfortunately, dreams are our first casualty in life - people seem to give them up, quicker than anything, for a 'reality.'

I'm glad movies aren't going to please everybody, they can't. But what they have to be is recognisable. I don't equate myself with a master painter, but I think you can recognise my films.

I'm a pretty convenient foil for a lot of people.

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away.

One person doesn't have to shoulder all the responsibility for why a film does or doesn't do well.

You just do the things that you love and see if other people can like them too.

When I see my children, and when I see the people who value me, I know how lucky I am.

I'm in a position where whatever I do, I can get my head handed to me. I'm in a position to fail because there is a whole group of people out there who want me to fail. It's a weird vibe.

If you're willing to tell somebody that you love them, are you also willing to say you're sorry? You need to, even when you think you're in the right.

I don't think I'd have been as good as Bruce was. He was a better JFK than I would have been.

I'm proud of all the movies I've made. They're not sequels, they're not franchises. And the reason I pick my films carefully is that I don't want to spit on my life. I like to think of myself as more than that.

I like when my face tingles, when the hair on the back of my neck stands up.

When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world, in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble.

I think there are good men and women in all decades. We've grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

I don't think I ever take huge risks, though I'm not scared of doing so.

I want to live forever, and I know I won't. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm only afraid of one thing: not being able to raise my kids.

Lincoln was the greatest speaker and he was ridiculed for how he looked, you know?

I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched.

I haven't tried to buffer myself. I like rolling the dice.

Field of Dreams is probably our generation's It's A Wonderful Life.

I believe people who go into politics want to do the right thing. And then they hit a big wall of re-election and the pettiness of politics. In the end, politics gets in the way of the business of people.

Money isn't a major motivating force in my life. Nor is my profession. There are other things that I care more about than being an actor.

I wanted very much to do Traffic and at one point it looked like I was going to work on it. And then, of course, Catherine Zeta-Jones had her relationship with Michael Douglas and it suddenly didn't happen.

I've always known that I'm a little out of vogue.

I am a really writer-oriented actor.

I don't have a seller's remorse about how I've lived.

I had a difficult time hearing my own inner voice about what I wanted to be in this life, because there were all these perfect examples of what a man actually does. The notion is that he goes to college, gets married and provides. That's what a man does.

You're this rat in the American maze, working your way towards the cheese, which is a job.

I am not a cynic.

I don't give up. I'm a plodder. People come and go, but I stay the course.

I haven't lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that's from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them.

If you don't understand your limitations you won't achieve much in your life.

When I do a Western, I often wonder what I would have really done in that situation.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

I like four-hour movies.