Top 105 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Duvall - Page 2

I wanted to show that crime doesn't pay. If you are saved and accept the Lord, you cannot use that as an excuse to avoid punishment.

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

You have a little bit of feeling for everyone you play.

Today, everything has to be made by committee, and has to have special effects, but there's always room for good films.

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

I'm better than Olivier.

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.

I like the good feeling movies.

I try not to look for messages in films.

Sometimes you don't prepare much. I mean, when I did 'Lonesome Dove' way back I rode horses day and night for like three or four months, and that got me ready for that.

Being a star is an agent's dream, not an actor's.

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.

The money part is one of the most difficult things. Coppola always said I should do a tango movie. If it hadn't been for him, I don't know where we would have gotten the money.

What drives me is I love my profession. I love to do it.

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 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.

When I'm at home in Virginia, I become more hermit-like. I like my own home.

Very often some of the religious miracle plays you see on television can be very corny, I find. And so simplistic.

The idea is that one's temperament improves with age; that you learn to deal better with people and become more benevolent and loving. That's not necessarily true. I try to stay loose but sometimes the best thing to do is get yourself away and take a good nap.

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

Not every successful man is a good father. But every good father is a successful man.

Never use money to measure wealth, son.

The only thing that might make me stay in bed would be fear. Once I get rest, then I can overcome the fear of a given day and then I'm ready. I'm ready to go. Not that I always have that fear, but sometimes that's the only thing that would keep me in bed more than just the laziness.

There's no smoking section in heaven.

To me, real comedy comes out of behavior. It's the choices you make as an actor. It's never about, "I want to do a comedy script." I can't think of it that way. And besides, some of those movies, those comedy movies, I can't even watch them.

It suits him because way back many years ago when Nikita Mikhalkov, the great Russian director, came, I said, "I want you to meet somebody." So I get Billy Bob from Malvern, Arkansas and Nikita Mikhalkov from Moscow. It's just two big talents meet. We sat for two or three hours and talked. It was great. He's the real deal, this guy.

I take a vitamin every day; it's called a steak.

The one you fight with the most is always the one who’s most like you.

I would like to ask each of you: Would you be in favor of some kind of education on birth control and if so, how would you use that as a possible solution to the ever present question of abortion.

If I ended my career, I wouldn't mind doing a TV series if it was a western and I played a mute gunfighter so I wouldn't have to remember lines every week.

The beginning and the end of the tango is the walk.

When you dance tango fast, you have to think slow.

I like the smell of toast. Coffee is okay, but I don't drink much coffee. But toast is a nice smell. You smell some toast coming from your kitchen in the morning, you know that you're involved in a domestic situation and the operation that's going on is pleasant.

The tango is a very interior dance. It's not an exterior - it's not flashy and all over the floor. It's a very interior dance when you see the old guys dance in the clubs. I learned everything from the old guys in the clubs.

Cows is one thing. But one man telling another man where he can go in this country is something else.

We're all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth 'til death. We travel between the eternities.

You obviously don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer or you don't have to be a dictator to play a dictator. So, you're an actor. You come up with whatever you come up with to play that part.

When you shift the gear and that little needle on the tach goes into the red and reads 9,000 rpm, that's bad.

There's no right or wrong just truthful or untruthful.

You gotta be careful with message movies. People say "What do you want people to take away from it?" I always say its totally individual.

If you piss your pants, you can only stay warm for so long.

Smell that? You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Listening to critics is like letting Muhammad Ali decide which astronaut goes to the moon.

If you don't daydream and kind of plan things out in your imagination, you never get there. So you have to start someplace.

There's a lot of ignorance in our business... Everybody's an authority. To have your own vision is rewarding.