Top 78 Quotes by Robert Duvall

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

I always figure from the cradle to the grave, we all have our individual journeys, and maybe my journey was a positive one and I accomplished certain things without stepping on too many toes.

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.

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

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

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.

When I'm at home in Virginia, I become more hermit-like. I like my own home.

But for me, the challenge is how you turn a character into behavior. Once the director says 'action', you just try to live between those two worlds.

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.'

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.