Everybody that's an actor leaves it for a while 'cause they ain't got a job.

I've already got my rent paid, and it's too late in my life for me to go around talking up stuff that I don't like or believe in.

Well, we all are what we are, I guess you might say by an accident of birth.

No, that's poker. To win, you've gotta get damned lucky.

I rope steers in team roping events. There's a header and a heeler on a roping team, and I'm the heeler.

I didn't go to acting school, but I've been observing my fellow man for 66 years now, and I would think that's the best school there is.

Everybody that's an actor leaves it for a while 'cause they ain't got a job.

The place was built on the premise that people want to gamble, and they may as well do it here. They look after their clientele, and, hell, they treat me like I'm one of their family.

Hopefully, generations after us will continue to protect, preserve, and look after this wonderful land.

I've got about $30,000 in chips, not near enough.

I live on a ranch in Utah for now, but I'm gonna move. I've got another ranch to move to, but its location is a secret. When I get there, I'm gonna plow the road in behind me.

I'm a widower with three sons and seven grandchildren. One of my sons is my partner on the ranch.

I'm very proud of my heritage.

I resent the fact that people in places like Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco believe that they should be able to tell us how to live our lives, operate our businesses, and what to do with the land that we love and cherish.

I maintain that if there is such a thing as a true and honest environmentalist, it's people like Slim and hopefully me, who have been caretakers of the land all our lives, along with the generations before us.

I'm not anybody's judge; I don't know what motivates people to do what they do. But I have a lot of admiration for anybody who can start with absolutely nothing and make a little something out of it.

I didn't go to high school. I think that after you learn to read and write and do your numbers and flush the toilet behind yourself, you don't need no more schoolin'. You need to get out in the water and swim.

I love watching a good horse do what he's bred to do - I guess that's what I like the most about it. And I love to see good athletes do what they're bred to do.

What I know about poker, you can fit into a thimble with room left over, but I'm learning.

My saddle horses are my friends. My dogs are my friends.

I raise quarter horses. Mine are mostly thoroughbred cross horses, a little bigger horses than some people like. I sell them or use them on the ranch. A lot of them go to the rodeo arena and some of them go to racetracks.

Hopefully generations after us will continue to protect preserve and look after this wonderful land.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

I've been a very lucky actor.

I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

And once you cease to be a real person, you stop being a good actor.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

Reality is, I'm an actor and an entertainer, and I really wouldn't know what to do with another profession.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.

Follow the wisdom of the great actor, James Cagney, you hit your mark, you look the other guy in the eye, and you tell the truth.

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

Oh, well, in Los Angeles everybody is an actor, or a producer, or a writer, or a director, or an agent, or... So everybody understands the hours.

I didn't want to be an actor.