Tommy Lee Jones's Quotes

All my life I've had the privilege to make my living with my imagination, and the most important thing has been to see my creative life grow. I was educated to do that and have lived accordingly.

I don't get it. If you're saying, Tommy Lee, you don't fit the image of the East Coast, social elitist wealthy people who comprise Harvard, the only thing I can say is you have no idea what comprises Harvard.

I have worked on very good movies that have been buried, and I've worked on some resounding mediocrities that have been paraded through the marketplace like they were masterpieces.

I haven't a clue if there is life on other planets but I'd be charmed if we found a unicellular organism on Mars. It would change our whole concept of life on Earth.

I want to photograph what I see and put it in a dramatic context. I'm an actor and a writer, and I want to tell these stories and present these shapes, colors and movements as I see them, as I see them serve a narrative. As I see that narrative serve an audience. That's what I want to do.

No, I don't think about the myth of the West. It's not the kind of thinking I do. That's more suited to people who live in big towns on the West Coast or East Coast, people who stay under a roof, in a room, all the time.

What appeals to me? There are things, points of view, uses of the language, habits of dress, ways of thought and believing that came to me from my grandparents and came to them from theirs. Things that are of good use in any situation, no matter what the future may hold.

You can't instruct an audience to laugh, but what you can do is read well and understand the spirit and subtleties, if there are any, in the dialogue.

Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They're underused.

Acting is fun for me and it doesn't really matter how, whether it's hard work or easy work, it's always fun.

I always told my children when they whined... Only the boring are bored.

I think any stereotyping is too much.

I know a lot of cowboys and I've done a little work on ranches with cattle, and those people become your friends, and keep their word.

Ethnic stereotypes are boring and stressful and sometimes criminal. It's just not a good way to think. It's non-thinking. It's stupid and destructive.

As a child of West Texas, I identify with Hispanic culture every bit as much as I do North American culture.

The world's not a very comfortable place if you have a nightmare to face.

I'm a believer in belief. Faith is something that works - it causes people to do things, it has results. It's an intangible, indefinable, very real thing. And it moves people, sometimes to atrocity. And sometimes to survival.

If military movies were automatically successful we'd make nothing but military movies. But seriously, patriotism is one thing that all Americans have in common.

My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you're not strictly bound to a linear narrative.

The tactic of leading people into... a war that doesn't make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't intimidate me.

As an actor I want to do as many takes as I can. I wanna shoot the scene... or shoot the shot 'til they make me quit.

As an actor to watch an audience of people howl together in a single mind as a result of work you've done together with friends is a privilege.

Characters with no integrity are just as interesting as characters with lots of integrity.

Cormac McCarthy's language is perfect. He is in my view the greatest living American prose stylist.

Human beings are glorious and preposterous characters.

I don't analyze things like titles.

I don't direct movies for a living.

I don't do anything that is not fun. I just don't do it.

I don't fight anybody anytime or anywhere.

I don't play just villains. I like to have parts that are not simply villains.

I don't think I would describe my sense of humor. Doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd do.

I enjoy acting more and more than when I was 17.