Robert Redford

I'm always drawn to stories that people don't know about, particularly when they're inside of a story that everyone knows about.

People say I've gone against Hollywood, but I've tried to be independent within Hollywood, tried to be my own person.

When I was a kid, all I knew was that I felt more comfortable sitting in one chair than in another. And now I realize it was because one chair was older. I still respond directly to the age of things.

For me, the Sundance Institute is just an extension of something I believed in, which is creating a mechanism for new voices to have a place to develop and be heard.

Storytelling was a way to see the world bigger than the one you were looking at, and that had great appeal for me. I think, since that was part of my upbringing, it became part of me, and I wanted to pass it along to my kids and my grandkids.

Be careful of success; it has a dark side.

I had just arrived in New York from California. I was nineteen years old and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most young actors did - meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor, 'cause you yourself hadn't shown up yet.

Ideas aren't real estate, they grow collectively and that knocks out the egotistical loneliness that generally infects art.

We've poisoned the air, the water, and the land. In our passion to control nature, things have gone out of control. Progress from now on has to mean something different. We're running out of resources and we are running out of time.

For me, personally, skiing holds everything. I used to race cars, but skiing is a step beyond that. It removes the machinery and puts you one step closer to the elements. And it's a complete physical expression of freedom.

Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind money is the end. Right now, I think independent film is very confused, because there's excess pressure in the marketplace for entertainment to pay off.

The measure of our success will be the condition on which we leave the world for the next generation.

Have a strong vision about the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it.

The world around us is in a sea change, and I think the glory of art is that it cannot only survive change, it can lead it

It's an honor putting art above politics. Politics can be seductive in terms of things reductive to the soul.

I have no regrets, because I've done everything I could to the best of my ability.

It's hard to pay attention these days because of multiple affects of the information technology nowadays. You tend to develop a faster, speedier mind, but I don't think it's necessarily broader or smarter.

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

When I started, I was an artist; I wanted to be an artist. I became an actor almost by accident. I acted for fifteen years and tried to produce. I looked for stories that were the story beneath the story that you thought you knew, like 'The Candidate'.

Times change; Hollywood is not the same as it was when I first entered the business. It felt to me like it was starting to narrow down and centralize itself around what would... make money.

Not taking a risk is a risk. That's how I see it.