Top 160 Quotes & Sayings by Kevin Costner - Page 2

I'm only interested in being a good actor and in being remembered for my best films, not for the way I look. But it seems inevitable in this line of work that I have to care about the way I look without getting obsessed about it.

In America, politicians do whatever to get re-elected, and a lot of decisions that were being made at that time by Kennedy were certain not to get him re-elected.

I'm getting those familiar feelings, and I'm just going to enjoy the process of getting to know someone again.

I stand up for what I believe. I don't know if it's always paid off for me, because I've been ridiculed and humiliated.

I've been around where I knew other actors were going to steal the scene, and I don't compete with them.

When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman's and it didn't bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors.

If somebody said my wife's not beautiful, I'd go, she is. I wouldn't say, really? No, she is. I know she is. In my mind, you know.

I wouldn't do the movie unless I thought it had a chance to be good.

I'm a 'what if' person. I have always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience. I have taken blows. I have had high moments. But I don't think the blows have ever hardened me. My enthusiasms are still big.

I think if you want to make a good sports movie, you've got to cut down on the sports. You have to make it about people. You can't try to impress people with your knowledge and the X and O's and all the details and the technicalities.

You can be as you choose to be. It's an act of discipline sometimes, but it can be done.

Broken people say awful things and do incredibly absurd things.

I will never forget what happened here tonight.people I went to school with will never forget.

A good idea is something like an emotion, you just can't keep it in.

You can spend your life trying to be popular, and that's a tricky business. You can just try to be true to yourself.

There's a moment in time where kids really don't want to hear anything from their parents.

I've never changed my approach to acting. I've always felt like I've gotten better. I think that all of us can get better. I feel like, in my acting, I'm better than I was three pictures ago. I think about it. I'm a slow study. It takes me a long time to grasp the material, in order to perform it. But when I come to the set, on the first day, I know the whole movie. That's why I have to start early.

Conventional wisdom is so scary because what if everybody's wrong?

I just tried to build on my failures.

I always thought the leading actor should be the best supporting actor, because you're the only person that can help every other actor on the set.

It was an experience of a lifetime to sit only a few feet away from him [Castro] and watch him relive an experience he lived as a very young man.

I dream of big things. I work for the small things. If you're going to dream, you might as well dream big. A lot of that came from my mother. She was adamant about the work ethic---about how you can't just dream things.

I'd like to put on buckskins and a ponytail and go underwater with a reed, hiding from the Indians... To me, that's sexy!

I've always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience.

Life's better when it's fun. Boy, that's deep, isn't it?

I don't have a seller's remorse about how I've lived. I am cognizant of what I have done, and any of us could maybe draw the line better. But I've tried to live pretty fearlessly.

I like being around people that mean what they say.

You're just as good, and if you work harder, you can be better and you can be more than you think you can.

True movies will never be measured by how much they make - they'll be measured by how they make you feel.

When a defining moment comes along, you define the moment, or the moment defines you.

We all have to have our north star that we fix on and go to, but life is so much about the things that bump into you.

It sounds vain, but I could probably make a difference for almost everyone I ever met if I chose to involve myself with them either professionally or personally.

It's such a cool thing in life to get what it is you want. Most of the time we don't, but occasionally we do.

I feel like I've been able to live a dream life, but my view of things is absolutely inside behavior about how I behave and how I count on other people behaving.

Conventional wisdom can get us into so much trouble, especially as artists.

I don't like definitions. I like four-hour movies.

Audiences trust Westerns when you hit the right tone. I think they're not in vogue, but they will always be in vogue when you hit the right note.

The western will always be here. And it just depends on how good you make one. And one movie doesn't kill it. And one movie doesn't preserve it. It's storytelling. It's a very American thing. I'll continue to do it.

I have a tremendous belief in people, not that people don't let me down, not that I haven't maybe let some people down. But I have a tremendous belief in people and in the common experience.

There's actually a big difference between story and character. A great story doesn't make a great movie. A great script, which defines its moments and characters can become a great movie. You can make a movie that makes a lot of money and it may or may not have great story or great characters.

I don't go against the grain because I'm a contrary person.

When I read a story that I think has value and I want to be in it, that doesn't change for me. It doesn't fall out of favor for me. I might have to move on because the universe is saying you can't make this right now. But I'm going to circle back and make it.

I've been able to do a lot of things in the movies. I've been able to run with the buffalo, you know. I've been able to pitch a perfect game in Yankee Stadium. I've been in the bathtub with Susan Sarandon. I've had a lot of chances to do a lot of things. I enjoy sports, but I enjoy sports so much to the point that I wouldn't do the movie unless I thought it had a chance to be good.

Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them.

I believe in the soul ... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

I don't take much stock in other people's opinions if I think something's good.

I'm not defining my band by other people's music, but by my own.

I have instinctually thought I could do things in my life, and I followed that up by sometimes putting everything I have at risk - my money, my house - to make a movie.

There's nothing more noble than a father and mother making an opportunity for their child, knowing that their life is gonna be hard. There's something incredibly heroic about that.

When you try to portray people's lives, you try to make sure you don't portray them as clowns and that you give them a level of dignity. You don't try to change their persona, but you try to understand that they had unique problems, set in a century that you don't live.

I think one of the first things to go as people's lives start to go down is their dreams. Dreams should be the last thing to go - dreams are the things you go down with. If you're left clinging to a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean, I'd put on it the word dreams.

What is it you want? That's a question that we all get posed sometimes internally and sometimes externally.

Some people come to you because if you're in their movie, it'll help them raise money. And some people come to you because they think you're the person to play the part.

It's nice to be wanted in almost any capacity.

Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they've stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.

Sometimes we worry about the things that you know that matter the least and don't focus on the things that matter the most.

Westerns aren't about the gunfight, even though it has to be there at one point. It's not what they're about, at least the good ones. It's about the drama. It's about the resourcefulness of men and women.

I've never had that fear of going against the grain.

In my younger days, I used to pick up sluts, and I don't mean that nastily. It's more a term of endearment, really, for girls who know how to speak their minds.