Tommy Lee Jones

You know, I don't really think you have to play nice guys.

I probably watch less than one hour of television a week. And when I do watch television, it's usually a football game. Sometimes I'll watch a news broadcast for a few minutes. Otherwise, I don't have time.

I think any thinking person should be worried about climate change.

I'm kind of pleased with myself that I've got a tailor on Savile Row. I'm 68 years old. I deserve it.

I've worked with more than 50 directors ,and I've paid attention since day one. That's pretty much been my education, apart from studying art history and shooting with my own cameras. I've seen 50 different sets of mistakes and 50 different ways of achieving. You just leave the bad part out.

It's no mean calling to bring fun into the afternoons of large numbers of people. That, too, is part of my job, and I'm happy to serve when called on.

As an actor I want to do as many takes as I can. I wanna shoot the scene... or shoot the shot 'til they make me quit.

The tactic of leading people into... a war that doesn't make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't intimidate me.

All my life I've had the privilege to make my living with my imagination, and the most important thing has been to see my creative life grow. I was educated to do that and have lived accordingly.

I want to make movies about my country from my point of view.

I've never really known what glamour is.

In the course of American history, great steps are taken by ordinary people, and ordinary people are not perfect.

I fear other actors who are not prepared. And I fear directors who are afraid.

If you don't hurt anybody or try to steal anything, you'll be fine in the South.

The world's not a very comfortable place if you have a nightmare to face.

Characters with no integrity are just as interesting as characters with lots of integrity.

I enjoy acting more and more than when I was 17.

I think that no matter how much you don't like yourself or the drama of your life you can still find some comedy in it.

Normal people with normal problems can be hilarious.

The most important question in American cinema, I've learned, is 'When is lunch?'

I've made some bad movies. And I really enjoyed it!

Football was a wonderful experience for me. It was a means of, oh, I don't know, sustaining for much of my youth. In times of trouble, I've always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.

I've worked with some very good directors and some very bad ones. I learned a great deal from both. From the bad, untalented people, you learn what not to do. And when you work with very highly talented people, you want to emulate them.

My education as a filmmaker has been entirely practical. I started working professionally in the film business in 1970, and I've been at it steadily since, and I pay a lot of attention.

I've worked in the film business for 45 years, and I want to keep on growing as a filmmaker. I want to see my visual life grow and be increasingly effective in this world.

I try to be as good a director as I possibly can. I try to be prepared, and I hope everyone else is. The preparation, I suppose, means just about everything. Little things mean a lot.

I like to make movies on the west side of the Mississippi River, and a lot of times, the movies I direct have horses and big hats in them and get called westerns, but that's okay. I used to resent that, but I don't anymore.

There's an undeniable tradition of sexism in this country that ties into the move westward by people of European descent and different ways of looking at Manifest Destiny on the west side of the Mississippi River.

It's important for me as an actor to know the entire script before you start shooting, and especially if you're directing, you don't want to be struggling with anything.

The entire elementary school in Rotan, Texas, presented a theatrical production of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' And the part of Sneezy fell to me.

I'm an introspective guy when there's money in it.

You should never ask a horse or an actor to do something they cannot do. Wisdom will teach you to find out what they can do and then make it easy for them.

I don't do anything that is not fun. I just don't do it.

How do you play someone in a movie? How do you do that? It's impossible - unless you know how. How do you cut somebody open and take out their appendix and sew them back up and watch them get well? That's impossible - unless you know how.

I don't need much of a character in my life. I've already got one; my family knows who I am, and I don't have a reason to make an impression on the world around me unless it's in a professional context. Acting is not a personal experience; it's a job.

I play characters, and I try to play them in a manner that's appropriate to the script. Physical movement and vitality of language is part of character.

I still think probably the only thing I'm suited for is being a boy from Texas.

I felt like the luckiest kid in the world because God had put me on the ground in Texas. I actually felt sorry for those poor little kids that had to be born in Oklahoma or England or some place. I knew I was living in the best place in the world.

You are going to grow up whether you want to or not. It requires no effort.

My grandmother grew up in a 19th-century world, and my daughter has grown up in a 21st-century world, and some issues, problems, dilemmas that these women face have not changed.

If you look at how people use the term 'western,' you can only conclude that it means a movie that has big hats and horses. And if you really want to sound like you've been thinking, then you'll use a term like 'genre.' But all the hell it seems to mean is big hats and horses. Which is not all that deeply analytical.

I don't have a favorite genre. I think 'genre' is a literary term. I don't have a favorite kind or type of movie. I like the ones that are good.

I'm a hedonist.

My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you're not strictly bound to a linear narrative.

What appeals to me? There are things, points of view, uses of the language, habits of dress, ways of thought and believing that came to me from my grandparents and came to them from theirs. Things that are of good use in any situation, no matter what the future may hold.

I have nothing against interviews. I don't pursue them. When people I work for deem it appropriate, I'm perfectly willing to serve.

I don't get it. If you're saying, Tommy Lee, you don't fit the image of the East Coast, social elitist wealthy people who comprise Harvard, the only thing I can say is you have no idea what comprises Harvard.

I don't play just villains. I like to have parts that are not simply villains.

I look upon pride as a sin.

I don't fight anybody anytime or anywhere.