Clint Eastwood

I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that's OK, too. It's whatever suits you.

I've had moments when I've thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there's some vibration, some connection.

As you get older, you're not afraid of doubt. Doubt isn't running the show. You take out all the self-agonizing.

It's much more fun to play something you're nothing like than what you are... It's much easier to hide yourself in a character.

You have to feel confident. If you don't, then you're going to be hesitant and defensive, and there'll be a lot of things working against you.

I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.

The main thing is, you just want to have your place in history. You hope that people will look back on it in 15, 20, 30 and beyond years, and say, "That was an exciting film."

You, me...we own this country. Politicians are employees of ours....And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.

What I think the mentor gets is the great satisfaction of helping somebody along, helping somebody take advantage of an opportunity that maybe he or she did not have.

Hollywood, as everyone knows, glamorizes physical courage. . . . if I had to define courage myself, I wouldn't say it's about shooting people. I'd say it's the quality that stimulates people, that enables them to move ahead and look beyond themselves.

The thing that haunts a man the most is what he isn't ordered to do.

Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy.

At Waco, was there really an urgency to get those people out of the compound at that particular time? Was the press going to make it look heroic for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms? At Ruby Ridge, there was one guy in a cabin at the top of the mountain. Was it necessary for federal agents to go up there and shoot a 14-year-old in the back and shoot a woman with a child in her arms? What kind of mentality does that?