Robert Duvall quotes: the acting legend’s lovely insights.
“I feel like our country is just a big giant kid with tremendous talent – like an athlete. A big giant kid that’s made mistakes, but there’s a lot of potential.”
“You never know how reality is going to coincide with your dreams. You’re optimistic, and you go from there.”
“If you don’t daydream and kind of plan things out in your imagination, you never get there. So you have to start someplace.”
“If you don’t have heroes in the beginning, you don’t grow.”
“Smart people are always on the edge a little bit. I’ve become more confident in some ways as I’ve gotten older, but you never can take anything for granted. You always have a little bit of doubt, if you have any sense.”
“Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.”
“Don’t chase what you can’t catch.”
“Let the process take you to the result, rather than going to the result.”
“Offhand is a thing I like to hear. I think… in life, sometimes people can be offhand. Something goes like this or something. And I don’t think everything has to be spelled out totally definitively.”
“Yesterday’s gone and we can’t get it back.”
“It’s no big thing, but you make big things out of little things sometimes.”
“Try to hope for the best and kinda let it find its own way. Let it find its own way. I would say start from zero sometimes and end with zero if you have to. Because nothing is definitively zero, there’s always something there.”
“I find a way of tricking myself to make something happen. And if it doesn’t happen let it go another way.”
“Too many people think that economics is this subject that should wait until the university level. But it can’t wait that long.”
“Never use money to measure wealth.”
“People are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing.”
“Not every successful man is a good father. But every good father is a successful man.”
“We either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the Bible.”
“The one you fight with the most is always the one who’s most like you.”
“There’s no right or wrong – just truthful or untruthful.”
“If you piss your pants, you can only stay warm for so long.”
“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.”
“Everybody likes to win.”
“We all have dreams. It’s amazing that so many dreams actually came true.”
“I work out a little bit, I ride a bombproof horse once a week, I try to watch my diet, and I just try to stay in shape. I try to keep myself fit, so-to-speak, in case something comes up. One of these days I’ll stop doin’ it.”
“I take a vitamin every day; it’s called a steak.”
“Getting together with friends and holding court over a meal is one of the great things in life.”
“I like people when they are straight-forward. Those are my kind of people. There is too much BS out there in the world today.”
“We’re all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth ’til death. We travel between the eternities.”
“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. Maybe my journey was a positive one and I accomplished certain things without stepping on too many toes.”
“What drives me is I love my profession. I love to do it.”
“I’m a man without a corporation.”
“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.”
“I always thought of myself as a later bloomer, so I like some of my work more later than earlier.”
“I like to do things that I develop from the ground up.”
“When I knew nothing, I thought I could do anything.”
“It’s like kids playing house: ‘You play the father, I’ll play the mother.’ You know, you dress up, you play, they pay, you go home. It’s a game – acting’s a game.”
“I always considered myself as a character actor. I always try to be versatile to show different sides of human experience.”
“When you create a character, it’s like making a chair, except instead of making something out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That’s the actor’s craft – using yourself to create a character.”
“Spending two years on my uncle’s ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns. To this day, I still think Lonesome Dove is my best part. My uncle always said that I could have been a rancher.”
“I was fortunate enough to be in The Godfather I & II going into Lonesome Dove, which are two of the most epic films of the twentieth century.”
“You get to a certain point where your career kind of works for itself – although you can never take that for granted.”
“I’ll keep on acting ’til they wipe the drool. I like the business. I like to do different parts and diverse characters. You keep going until you run out of enthusiasm. I haven’t lost my enthusiasm yet!”
“There’s a lot of ignorance in our business. Everybody’s an authority. To have your own vision is rewarding.”
“I like to direct. I like the business – until it’s time to quit, I want to keep doing it. Sometimes you plan things, but then the things that come around the corner that surprise you are better than what you planned. So maybe there are a few more surprises around the corner. You never know.”
“I get noticed to the extent that it’s flattering but not so much to be a nuisance. I’m just grateful for the opposite of anonymity, and that my work has been seen by so many people.”
“I hope I left behind a legacy that people will enjoy. But whatever they want to say, I can’t predict.”
“I had a wonderful career. I’ve been blessed to have a wonderful career in a great, great profession.”
“It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living.”
“People talk about being bigger than life – but there’s nothing bigger than life.”
Related: Gene Hackman quotes.
