“I had one well known director who kept saying, "Now Clint, this is what ...." And I'd say, "I know. I read the script. I'm the one who cast you as the director. Let me show you and you'll correct me if I'm wrong."”
“I like a drama. And I think that's the basis of good films, or good plays, is to have a nice drama.”
“Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have messed with? That's me.”
“There are so many parallels in society today [with era of J. Edgar Hoover ] that you can use, whether it's the head of a studio or the head of an organization, a major newspaper, a major factory or company, of people who stay too long, maybe, and overstay their usefulness.”
“Hillary Clinton has made a lot of dough out of being a politician. I gave up dough to be a politician. I'm sure that Ronald Reagan gave up dough to be a politician.”
“There's a rebel lying deep in my soul.”
“President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
“It's much more fun to play something you're nothing like than what you are... It's much easier to hide yourself in a character.”
“Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.”
“I think everybody has something that they've been obsessed about in their lifetime.”
“Things always look different from higher up.”
“There has to be something in every role that interests you.”
“Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.”
“There are certain age limits on police officers. They'd have retired me out at 65.”
“The best part of aging in this business is losing that obsession about work and being able to spend a little more time with family.”
“I love big business!”
“You're as young as you feel. As young as you want to be. There's an old saying I heard from a friend of mine. People ask him, "Why do you look so good at your age?" He'll say, "Because I never let the old man in." And there's truth to that. It's in your mind, how far you let him come in.”
“What I think the mentor gets is the great satisfaction of helping somebody along, helping somebody take advantage of an opportunity that maybe he or she did not have.”
“The thing that haunts a man the most is what he isn't ordered to do.”
“In 'Gran Torino,' I play a guy who's racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you're never too old to learn and embrace people that you don't understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.”
“I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”
“Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers.”
“I think the only way it has influenced me is to cause me to try to branch out and do other things. So that people will know that I am reaching out and trying to be a little more versatile. So they realize he is not a "Dirty Harry." He doesn't advocate martial law or mayhem -it's a character.”
“Everybody wants to make something they think is a surefire winner, though nobody knows what a surefire winner is, in my opinion.”
“I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.”
