A young actor once asked me, What do you do between jobs? I said, Hobbies, hobbies, and more hobbies.
Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.
There's no smoking section in heaven.
You just can't take a crash course to be a tango dancer in a movie.
I've always liked country music. It's a certain aspect of America that goes back to the British Isles and the influence is very native to America.
The most solitary I ever felt was when I was living in New York. I used to live in Enrico Caruso's old apartment, and I had a special staircase that took me up to the roof. There was nobody up there.
God does guide the lives of individuals and does fill them with the Holy Ghost.
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.
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.
Way, way, way back I played a little bit, but I am definitely not a golfer. You know, it just takes too much time anyway during the course of the day.
Around my own friends, I like to mess around.
Today, everything has to be made by committee, and has to have special effects, but there's always room for good films.
When you shift the gear and that little needle on the tach goes into the red and reads 9,000 rpm, that's bad.
My uncle always said that I could have been a rancher.
What drives me is I love my profession. I love to do it.
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.
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.
I love working in Texas anywhere.
When I'm at home in Virginia, I become more hermit-like. I like my own home.
I always thought of myself as a later bloomer, so I like some of my work more later than earlier.
The cultural contrast I saw between religions... Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. Protestants in general say things to God directly.
Look, 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.
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.
Although it wasn't that easy to do, it was wonderful working with John Wayne.
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.
