Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, ‚Clint, you must remember, it’s only a movie.‘

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

I love to pop up at the movie theaters. I love to treat the people who are there.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

I’m one of those people who says, ‚yes, cinema died when they invented sound.‘

The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

Very difficult to understand American audience, what they like, what they don’t like. Some movie I like very much, it doesn’t work. Some movie I don’t like, it gets big box office. Very difficult.

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

When I’m making an American film, it’s more safe because there are so many people on the set to watch me. Whatever I do, they say, ‚What are you doing!? Tell me first!‘ There are so many restrictions.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

A right delayed is a right denied.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let’s you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, ‚Well, put your hand over here.‘

Language is wine upon the lips.

If you look at the movie ‚Belly,‘ I identify with Sincere the most. I am a gangster. I love my lady to death. I’m not in the game for the wrong reasons. I’m not in the game for the glory. I’m in the game to survive so the people that I love could be straight. I’m a highly intelligent individual.

A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he’s going to get sick on it.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

If life gives you limes, make margaritas.

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‚Too much of a good thing can be wonderful‘.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

I must be cruel, only to be kind.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I’d ever have any interest in filmmaking.

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

I will make action movies, I think, for a few more years, another five years.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

Though she be but little, she is fierce.

A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

What is past is prologue.

I really hope someday in Hollywood, some producer or director will hire me only to do drama.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the ’60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.

A woman is an occasional pleasure but a cigar is always a smoke.

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!