Billy Bob Thornton
I'm not really a guy who wants to be a director, anyway.Collection: Guy
I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.Collection: People
Now the idea in the movie world is to make things the same. And in the TV world, the idea is to do something different, so... that's why I'm here!Collection: Ideas
Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.Collection: Different
I've been largely an improvisational actor for most of my career.Collection: Careers
At my dad's funeral I didn't cry when my dad died. I did it years later when I forgave him, which I've totally forgiven him and I loved my dad.Collection: Dad
Sometimes we don't want the bad guy to get caught because otherwise the story is over. You want to at least see it through to the end.Collection: Guy
After you've done 60-something movies, you're always looking for something different.Collection: Different
I worked as a roadie in the rock and roll business which was great fun. Very little money, very little food and the whole thing about the roadie's lifestyle is great because all the groupies have to go through the roadies to get to the rock stars. It's not necessarily true.Collection: Stars
When I was coming up, if you were on a TV show, that meant something was wrong with your career. Now it means something's right with your career.Collection: Mean
If you look at a character as a mountain over there that you have to climb, then I think you've lost 50 percent of the air.Collection: Character
The thing about a motion picture is that look of film on a big screen takes you into a magical.Collection: Looks
To tell you the truth, I don't ever talk about characters as separate from myself.Collection: Character
I don't think anybody chooses to be an underdog.Collection: Thinking
I think everybody's contemplating TV now, because mid-level and high-budget independent films are not being made now.Collection: Independent
I used to put that I studied with Stella Adler on my resume. I never met Stella Adler. But if you told a casting director you studied with Stella Adler all the sudden they'd let you in the door.Collection: Doors
People always like stories about the little guy fighting the big guy.Collection: Fighting
Independent films now, they want to give you $2 million to make it, 21 days to shoot it and they want 10 movie stars in it.Collection: Stars
I've led a very eclectic life.Collection: Eclectic
The great movies that I want to do now are being made for $2.5-million budgets.Collection: Want
You have to really know what you're saying.Collection: Knows
I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.Collection: Writing
The audience, that's who I care about.Collection: Care
Kids won't watch older movies - they want to see what's hip right now.Collection: Kids
The ones that work out really and ones that become something to the audience, those are the most important people.Collection: People
I didn't cry at my father's funeral, and I felt guilty about that. Of course, he got sick not too long after he and I had had that final altercation, and I felt real guilty because of that, too. Then years later, one day, I was probably in my late twenties, early thirties, and I just broke down crying, because I finally got my father.Collection: Father
Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that.Collection: Fun
You never know what an audience is going to think about something. The ones that the audience doesn't get, I tend to let them go. I don't like to dwell on them too much.Collection: Thinking
I always wanted to play a lawyer.Collection: Play
I've gone through my periods. I've read the Bible completely, all the way through twice. I did it once when I was about 20 and I did it again when I was about 30.Collection: Gone
Directing takes a good chunk of your life out. It's a very hard thing. As an actor, you go in for a couple of months and do your job, and then you move onto another one. As a director, it's with you for quite some time and you're responsible for the entire thing, whether the results are good or bad, or whether people throw darts at you or put you on a pedestal.Collection: Jobs
The only times you'll see me in terms of the movie business is when I have to go to the premieres of my own movies. I don't go to see ones that aren't mine because I don't even like going to mine.Collection: Term
I always say if you're going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I'm not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there's some French actors. Just get one of them, you know.Collection: Dialect Coach
Television is making, there was in independent film renaissance late '80s through the mid-90's. It was an amazing time. Television is doing that right now. So that's why everybody wants to do it. I mean if you're writing stuff like, you know, Fargo, or True Detective, or any of these things that are on, Breaking Bad, there are no rules in television.Collection: Mean
There are rules in movies. I did a movie playing a bad cop who was a heroin addict but they wouldn't let me smoke in a movie.Collection: Cop
On TV you can, you know you can cram, you know, 30 people into a closet and have an orgy, and then they can all shoot up, and everybody has cigarettes in their nostrils and their ears. They don't care. So yeah, television is amazing right now.Collection: People
I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.Collection: Writing
Well I loved Little League; so all the memories are pretty fond but I broke my thumb. That wasn't a lot of fun. I think probably the first time I pitched [I started out as a first baseman] and the first game I pitched in Little League, I struck out 10 batters. I had a curve ball a little early [laughs]. You're not really supposed to have one when you're 12, but I did, so I first game I struck out 10 batters. That's possibly my fondest memory.Collection: Fun
It's not that I don't understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter.Collection: Thinking
I’m not much of a drinker, so I’m going to eat seven pounds of pork.Collection: Pork