I don't feel the obligation to have a big explosion in the first 20 seconds so the audience doesn't turn on another channel. We are trying to make something that looks like a feature film that was bought for television and I think we are succeeding.

Do you like my suit? I think this is an amazing suit, don't you think?

I guess after Dances With Wolves they probably tried some derivative westerns, and if they didn't work, they said the western is dead and moved on to something else.

Which to this day is a source of enormous guilt, because I left with three classes to go in the business school to sign a contract with 20th Century Fox.

I had a strong, really good upbringing, not puritanical.

If you buy an expensive thing and you never use it, I don't think there's a point to it.

Son, never throw a punch at a redwood.

It's not that conservatives don't care. We do. We just have different answers than liberals do. It's a difference of the mind, not of the heart.

I live a pretty simple life.

To me, the excitement is in ordering a fine shotgun, going through the process that everybody who has bought one has gone through for 100 years. You order it, you make a significant down payment, and then you wait three or four years for the gun to be custom-made for you.

Having had that experience... I think, what modern culture wants to see is the relationship with the woman. I don't think you can tell a story on film nowadays where the woman simply is there for the man when he decides to settle down.

I praise CBS for taking a risk, which is always the price you pay for opportunity. This is not standard movie of the week storytelling. I think movies of the week have fallen into a niche and that isn't my niche.

And besides, because of all she has accomplished, Barbara Jordan has always been a hero of mine.

I feel the other element of a western is the land, which is very important in this movie. I mean the land is another character in the piece, actually.

I've never reacted well to other people telling me what to do.

I don't feel the obligation to have a big explosion in the first 20 seconds so the audience doesn't turn on another channel. We are trying to make something that looks like a feature film that was bought for television and I think we are succeeding.

Shooting clay targets is a very cleansing experience. It's very relaxing. It takes a lot of concentration. It's also very social, since you're usually shooting with friends. You can talk and forget about almost anything else that's on your mind.

I've learned by hanging out in Hollywood, where I disagree politically with most people, that most people's hearts are in the right place, and the only thing we have to argue about is the way to solve the problems.

I think a lot of Magnum was me.

You know, there's so much imitation and so much pandering in Hollywood.

I realized I really liked the screen. I knew it was a challenge, but I wasn't afraid of risk.

It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character's head.

But, you know there's a lot of westerns - not that they were bad - it's just that they can be remade because they're great stories that aren't indelible in an audience's mind when it comes to both the cast and the story.

You know I grew up watching the TV series The Rifleman.

There was a time I could have been mistaken for Burt Reynolds. I had a moustache and so did he. But he was the number one star in the world, so there wasn't really much confusion.

Hopefully you marry someone who you not only love, but who you like as well.

I don't think you should do something just to prove to an audience that you can do it, that's way out of your wheelhouse.

I hate going to the gym, so sweating outdoors sure beats sitting on a stationary bike staring at my navel.

I quit 'Magnum' to have a family. It took a long time to get off the train, but I try very hard to have balance, and this ranch has helped me do that.

I think of myself as an actor first, not a sex symbol. Do I think I'm sexy? No, that's someone else's judgment, and I honestly don't think you can try to be sexy and really succeed.

I think television has always been one to replicate when something's successful. I don't think there's quite as much innovation.

My first priority is time with my family.

People tracking your life and photographing you anywhere you go, that can make you crazy.

The Westerns I like aren't really comedies. I'm drawn to the scope of them and the land as a central character.

At my age, turning gray is kind of a blessing, where it softens all of the other horrible things it does to you, but it is what it is.

You don't do characters that are the same as you, otherwise why bother to act?

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?