Clint Eastwood Quotes

“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome!”

“Let's not go and ruin it by thinking too much.”

“I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.”

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

“Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.

(Interview,, February 20, 2005)”

“Nothing wrong with shooting… as long as the right people get shot.”

“My wife is my closest friend. Sure, I'm attracted to her in every way possible, but that's not the answer. Because I've been attracted to other people, and I couldn't stand 'em after a while.”

“I've actually had people come up to me and ask me to autograph their guns.”

“I thought I might die. But then I thought, 'Other people have made it through these things before'. I kept my eyes on the lights on shore and kept swimming.”

“Everybody wonders why I continue working at this stage. I keep working because there's always new stories. … And as long as people want me to tell them, I'll be there doing them.”

“If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it's an art form or whether it's just in life, it comes off---you don't have anything to prove; you can just be who you are.”

“Having the security of being in a series week in, week out gives you great flexibility; you can experience with yourself, try a different scene different ways. If you make a mistake one week, you can look at it and say, 'Well, I won't do that again,' and you're still on the air next week.”

“There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.”

“Tomorrow is promised to no one.”

“They say all marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning.”

“There's a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality.”

“I tried being reasonable, but I didn't like it.”

“I don't wanna need you because I can't have you.”

“First, I blow a hole in your face; then I go back inside, and sleep like a baby… I guarantee you.”

“Take your work seriously, but don't take yourself seriously”

“It's a hell of a thing; killin' a man. You take away everything he ever had and ever would have.”

“I know what you're thinking 'Did he fire six shots or only five?”

“Are you going to pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?”

“A Love like this happens but once in a lifetime”

“Westerns. A period gone by, the pioneer, the loner operating by himself, without benefit of society. It usually has something to do with some sort of vengeance; he takes care of the vengeance himself, doesn't call the police. Like Robin Hood. It's the last masculine frontier. Romantic myth. I guess, though it's hard to think about anything romantic today. In a Western you can think, Jesus, there was a time when man was alone, on horseback, out there where man hasn't spoiled the land yet.”

“I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to be president, anyway. … I think it is maybe time -- what do you think -- for maybe a businessman. How about that? A stellar businessman.”

“Don't just do something, stand there.' Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.”

“I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement. It was just the kind of character I had envisioned for a long time, keep to the mystery and allude to what happened in the past. It came about after the frustration of doing Rawhide for so long. I felt the less he said the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience.”

“With that kind of money, I could have invaded some country.”

“In recent times it just seems that women have been relegated to either romantic roles or fluff pieces. So the appeal, for me, is to make a picture about a real woman.”

“He just made my day. What a guy.”

“Lazy, and would cost you a morning. I never started a day with Clint Eastwood in the first scene, because you knew he was gonna be late, at least a half hour or an hour.”

“At that time I needed a mask rather than an actor, and Eastwood had only two facial expressions: one with the hat and one without it.”

“The roles that Eastwood has played, and the films that he has directed, cannot be disentangled from the nature of the American culture of the last quarter century, its fantasies and its realities.”

“Don't just do something, stand there.”