Bill Paxton Quotes

#1. I hate tests. It's a really lousy way to judge a person's ability.

Bill Paxton

#2. I've had a life where things have worked out for me beyond my wildest dreams, and my brother's had just the opposite.

Bill Paxton

#3. On the Internet, on IMDB, they've got that my middle name as Archibald. I don't have a middle name! My father doesn't like middle names.

Bill Paxton

#4. Growing up in Texas and Oklahoma, Ben Johnson was more famous than John Wayne to some of us. I knew him. I worked with him on a low budget film years ago, and we'd sit around at night while waiting for a shot.

Bill Paxton

#5. My first film was a movie shot in 1974. I was 18 on that movie set. It was called 'Big Bad Mama.' I turned 19 on the next movie I worked on, which was a black 'Blazing Saddles.' I worked in the art department. It was called 'Darktown Strutters.'

Bill Paxton

#6. I think I got an Instamatic camera when I was 8 years old, and ever since then, I've liked to record things. I don't know why. Maybe it's just to kind of try to leave some kind of record behind.

Bill Paxton

#7. I grew up in Texas, but that was 20 years ago. Last year, in Fort Worth, they had hail the size of softballs. We're seeing more and more powerful storms, of all types, almost on a biblical level.

Bill Paxton

#8. I didn't have a normal background - I was completely demented from a very early age!

Bill Paxton

#9. I came out to Hollywood when I was just 18, and my dad, he was really into Hollywood and theater and art, and I guess growing up, he exposed me to a lot of culture, and I just started making Super-8 films in high school and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker.

Bill Paxton

#10. When you start out as a filmmaker, you do parodies, because you can't really compete on a studio level.

Bill Paxton

#11. You don't really get to pick and chose what you would like to be doing. But I've been very fortunate, and I think water seeks its own level. You do gravitate towards things that you would get off on.

Bill Paxton

#12. There's something about being at the tournaments that you don't really get on TV, although golf is a great sport to watch on television.

Bill Paxton

#13. I don't care how much hardware you throw at an audience. If they are not emotionally invested in the thing, it's zero. I can name a slew of films, but I have no ax to grind. I understand the commerce of Hollywood probably better than anyone.

Bill Paxton

#14. Slow motion is so visually cinematic; when you create that, you create it for your audience, you let them have the feeling of what it must be like to be there. And in a movie, you can't forget the audience.

Bill Paxton

#15. Since I was a small boy, I was always around the game. I don't play golf much myself, but I love watching it. My father has played golf all his life.

Bill Paxton

#16. I've always loved movies about con men. I think con men are as American as apple pie.

Bill Paxton

#17. I'm actually really opposed to the death penalty.

Bill Paxton

#18. Howdy. I'm gonna separate your head from your shoulders. Hope you don't mind none.

Bill Paxton

#19. I got to direct a human interest sports drama - to this day, one of my proudest achievements in my career and a source of undying pride.

Bill Paxton

#20. In the old days the studios guided your career. Now it's all up to you.

Bill Paxton

#21. Through readiness and discipline, we are the masters of our fate.

Bill Paxton

#22. I've had a career that is kind of under the radar, but it sure is varied, and I've been so blessed to be able to get paid to do something I love to do.

Bill Paxton

#23. We mystify the art of moviemaking, but it's not amystical science. You take a good screenplay, put a group togetherand you hammer it out.

Bill Paxton

#24. It was so weird that I would end up directing 'The Greatest Game Ever Played,' because, y'know, I'm not a big golfer myself. But I grew up around the game. My mom and dad kind of built their dream house off the 11th fairway of Shady Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth.

Bill Paxton

#25. My father always read obituaries to me out loud, not because he was maudlin or morbid, but because they were mini biographies.

Bill Paxton

#26. It's very liberating to be naked in front of a hundred people, but there's nothing sexual about lovemaking on a movie set.

Bill Paxton

#27. It's become very popular in contemporary films to have the twist ending.

Bill Paxton

#28. It's always good to have no expectations when you see a film. Then you can be pleasantly disappointed or surprised.

Bill Paxton