Robert Duvall Quotes

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

— Robert Duvall

“Around my own friends, I like to mess around.”

— Robert Duvall

“There was nothing wrong with shouting at God.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“Stripping away artifice - it's the constant standard I aim for in acting, to approximate life. People talk about being bigger than life - but there's nothing bigger than life.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

Seeing your name on the list for KP or guard duty when you're in the Army is like reading a bad review.

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“A young actor once asked me, What do you do between jobs? I said, Hobbies, hobbies, and more hobbies.”

— Robert Duvall

“But I think there are more good young actors now than ever. It's a medium that everyone wants to be connected with - it is such a hip medium going into the 21st century.”

— Robert Duvall

“I'll keep on acting 'til they wipe the drool. I like the business. I like to do different parts and diverse characters. I haven't lost my enthusiasm yet!”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“If you don't have heroes in the beginning, you don't grow.”

— Robert Duvall

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!

— Robert Duvall

“It's a cyclical thing. When they make one, everyone loves them. Different genres come around in succession. People always welcome the western. It's America's genre.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“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?”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“I love working in Texas anywhere.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“Art is competitive.”

— Robert Duvall

“Everybody likes to win.”

— Robert Duvall

“I can't live without a woman. I have to have a woman, have to have a wife.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“I don't have many people showing up at my door. Very few people come out. When they do, I get a little suspicious. I live way up on a hill, way, way back in the country.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.'”

— Robert Duvall

“You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you're making a fiction film, it's entertainment, but you want it to be as real as possible.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

Never use money to measure wealth, son.

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

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

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall

“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.”

— Robert Duvall