Top 100 Quotes About Westerns
#1. When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers' films and westerns and stuff like that. That's where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.
Alden Ehrenreich
#2. I had so much fun doing Django, and I love westerns so much that after I taught myself how to make one, it's like, 'OK, now let me make another one now that I know what I'm doing.'
Quentin Tarantino
#3. The impetus for 'The Sisters Brothers' was it occurred to me that there was no neurosis in westerns, or there's a minimal amount of it.
Patrick DeWitt
#4. One of my favorites of all time was with Jim Jarmusch, called 'Dead Man.' I was in that with Johnny Depp. I ride really well, and I shoot a gun really well. I love the genre. Once I did Westerns, I was hooked.
Lance Henriksen
#5. When western books are set in the present, critics seldom call them westerns: the national myth allows the West only a past.
Gerald W. Haslam
#6. I just watched so many Westerns as a kid that you end up using archetypes and sort of tropes of that genre, because there's a language there and you can twist it and turn it on its head or play to it or go sideways at any time.
Gore Verbinski
#7. You know, Alundra Blayze, with her looks could star in TV westerns ... if she had two more legs.
Jerry Lawler
#8. The thing that influenced me most in relation to 'Nanny McPhee' were the Westerns I watched with my father. All the Spaghetti Westerns; all the Virginians; all the High Chaparrals. Because if you think about the form, it's a stranger from out of town.
Emma Thompson
#9. The marriage between the fantasy and the Westerns is that thing of, if people think you're the best gunslinger around, they're going to come looking for you.
Kieran Bew
#10. By the end of the 50s, everything began to collapse and, little by little, I lost all of my work. I lost Rex, the Wonder Dog and all the westerns.
Gil Kane
#11. I've never been specifically attached to westerns, but there are those I like - one of the best westerns I've seen is 'Unforgiven.' I think the genre has something extremely powerful that can allow them to talk about good and evil in a very straight way.
Mads Mikkelsen
#12. As a child, I was subjected to a lot of spaghetti Westerns and hated them. I wanted the Indians to win - or just not be so sad!
Kara Walker
#13. I'm not a great science fiction fan myself. I probably feel that way about Westerns. Like I used to play Cowboys and Indians, they can act out Will and the Robot.
Mark Goddard
#14. When I did 'Bird,' it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn't in it and second because most of the films I'd been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.
Clint Eastwood
#15. When I was putting the 'Best of Hollywood' book together, I sat down and added up just the list of Westerns I've done, and it came to well over 200.
James Best
#16. I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.
Sandra Cisneros
#17. The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate.
Hugh Mackay
#18. I would love to do a Western again if Westerns came back into fashion.
Bruce Boxleitner
#19. The only thing I've kind of missed is finding a really good western that I want to do, because I watched westerns a lot.
Samuel L. Jackson
#20. I've always been really hot on westerns. All my life growing up, cowboy, cowboy, cowboy.
Morgan Freeman
#21. Westerns was why I got into the business. I grew up on a small farm in California and all I ever wanted to do was to play gangsters and cowboys in movies.
Brion James
#22. I actually don't like westerns much. I like good westerns, but it isn't my preferred genre. There are all kinds of westerns: acid westerns, '70s westerns, Nicholas Ray's neurotic westerns. The ones I tend to like are nutso westerns.
Andrew Dominik
#23. Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.
Val Kilmer
#24. In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.
Daniel Craig
#25. His Charles Bronson-like demeanour together with his Clint Eastwood stare and his John Wayne swagger, created from a diet of westerns and Eighties TV mixed with a lifetime of planning, organising, managing, and leading, were now gelled together with the battle-hardened soldier he had become.
Connor Fitzgerald
#26. Years ago, when I was writing westerns, other writers who were friends of mine wanted me to collaborate with them. And it just didn't work.
Gary Paulsen
#27. I've thought about doing other dramatic roles besides westerns, but I grew up in the West and I know the West.
Ken Curtis
#28. We're not nearly as violent as the westerns.
Moe Howard
#29. I would very much like to make Westerns. I love Westerns. I've worked on many Westerns in my youth, in Spain and here, and I love working on them.
John Landis
#30. I just love westerns. One of my favourite actors is John Wayne, probably one of the most underrated actors there's ever been. He's quite an incredible actor.
Ray Winstone
#31. I wrote 'The Searcher' because I love westerns, and they've fallen out of fashion.
Simon Toyne
#32. My parents were huge fans of westerns, European cinema, and horror in particular. They wouldn't just show me kids' films.
Hideo Kojima
#33. Studios, because they are investing a great deal of money in movies, they want a guarantee that when they hire somebody that person can deliver for them. Everything is fear based, so they pigeonhole people. But I've written everything, from Westerns to sci-fi to dramedy, I've done it all.
Melissa Rosenberg
#34. I felt pretty comfortable with Westerns, apart from the fact I couldn't ride.
Richard Widmark
#35. I always knew I wanted to do a Western. And trying to think of what that would be, I always figured that if I did a Western, it would have a lot of the aesthetics of Spaghetti Westerns, because I really like them.
Quentin Tarantino
#36. What made us different from other westerns was the fact that 'Gunsmoke' wasn't just action and a lot of shooting; they were character-study shows.
James Arness
#37. 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.
Tom Selleck
#38. My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.
John Edgar Wideman
#39. Why westerns get segregated into a genre in Hollywood, I don't know ... It's just good entertainment.
Tom Selleck
#40. I can't go to bed with John Wayne, so I do the next best thing: I go to bed with my girlfriend, who once met the great man. That's how much I love westerns.
Clive Sinclair
#41. I love westerns, I'd love to make more of them.
Jeff Bridges
#42. How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)
John Steinbeck
#43. I love Westerns and I remember as a kid climbing up on the couch and make it into a saddle and shoot guns and fall off. I would lay there after my death and my mom would tell me to eat lunch and I'd say, 'I'm still dead, Mom!' I was Method, even then.
Creed Bratton
#44. All of my friends want to be in my books, but no one wants to die ... ummm ... I write westerns ... everyone dies.
Barry Andrew Chambers
#45. I watched Westerns from the time I was a girl. My dad was a big Western fan. I always loved Clint Eastwood movies and 'Westworld', where the guy gets trapped in a western-themed amusement park. The western motif was fascinating to me.
Kimberly Elise
#46. In Westerns you were permitted to kiss your horse but never your girl.
Gary Cooper
#47. I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah.
Ann Nocenti
#48. The Westerns I like aren't really comedies. I'm drawn to the scope of them and the land as a central character.
Tom Selleck
#49. I want to be able to make westerns like Akira Kurosawa makes westerns.
Sam Peckinpah
#50. Westerns are closer to art than anything else in the motion picture business.
John Wayne
#51. Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.
Ridley Scott
#52. I stared at him for a moment, sifting through everything he'd just said and trying to find an appropriate response, but the only thing I could think of was, "Westerns?" "Really? That's all you got?" "Are you sixty-five?" "Shut the fuck up.
Nicole Jacquelyn
#53. Clint Eastwood said, the only things America has contributed to civilization are the western and jazz. And I don't think westerns are bad, but lots of people make great cinema. But jazz is right there.
Robert Wyatt
#54. People love westerns worldwide. There's something fantasy-like about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It's a simpler time. There's no organized laws and stuff.
Clint Eastwood
#55. I love Westerns. They're a unique creation of American mythology.
Simon Toyne
#56. I initially studied literature [in France], and then I went to cinema school. I discovered the Cinematheque, and saw not only action movies and westerns, but also lots of serious movies.
Costa-Gavras
#57. I like action films, not exclusively, but I like Samurai films. I like Westerns. Not so much war pictures, but a few. I like kinetic cinema.
Alexander Payne
#58. History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.
Edward M. Lerner
#60. With Westerns you have the landscape is important, and it's empty, and only you populate it. When you populate it, you can tell any kind story that Shakespeare told, you can tell in a Western.
Lawrence Kasdan
#61. The negative attitudes toward the genres - romance, science-fiction, westerns, suspense, etc. - are fallout from the academic world's long-standing fascination with existential philosophy and modern theories of psychology and sociology.
Jayne Ann Krentz
#62. Westerns are fun. I wish more of them would be made. When you're out there on a set, carrying a gun, riding a horse, you kind of get lost in that make believe world.
Ricky Schroder
#63. War stories, westerns, spy stories are all accepted as respectable because they are read by men. It is only women's light reading which is derided.
Charlotte Lamb
#64. Even the Westerns that I grew up with, the Sergio Leone's and all that, there was always a sort of anti-hero, a guy reluctant to shame even, to pick up the gun again because he wants to help other people, and he does, he uses his skills for that.
Antoine Fuqua
#65. I was always the bad guy in westerns. I played more bad guys than you can shake a stick at until I played the Professor. Then I couldn't get a job being a bad guy.
Russell Johnson
#68. The four movies I can remember seeing as a kid were 'The Elephant Man,' 'The Magnificent Seven,' 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' and 'Mad Max!' Two of those are westerns. So the western genre is emblazoned on my memory from childhood, and those are two great movies.
Casey Affleck
#69. When I was working my way up, it seemed to me that only Westerns and 'Star Treks' or sci-fi movies could afford to get away with presenting the problems - like prejudice and desegregation, for instance - that we face in our everyday lives.
Ed Asner
#70. I watched westerns when I was a kid, like everybody else, but I wasn't a total nerd or geek about it. I kind of fell in love with westerns heavily when I started watching Sergio Leone's westerns.
Mads Mikkelsen
#71. I love horses, and I love all of it. The sights and sounds and smells, the whole genre of Westerns - I love them. And I know they're rare for actors to get to do, and they're even more rare for women to get to do, so I really think I was drinking in the experience on so many levels.
Mary Steenburgen
#72. Sergio Leone was a big influence on me because of the spaghetti westerns.
Quentin Tarantino
#73. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
#74. I did 10 years of comedies and 10 years of Westerns. I really like to stay away from car chases. I prefer the more intimate film. You have a much more direct association with the emotions.
Elmer Bernstein
#75. I ride really well and I shoot a gun really well. I love the genre. Once I did Westerns, I was hooked. I love them, but there's been very few of them made. I never wanted to play a guy who was acting like a cowboy. I wanted to play someone who had a real life, but was also trapped into situations.
Lance Henriksen
#76. I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.'
Elmore Leonard
#77. I sort of got into Westerns ... It was a sort of desperation move, really. I had several pictures that didn't go very well, and I just realised that I would have to try something else.
James Stewart
#78. Audiences trust Westerns when you hit the right tone. I think they're not in vogue, but they will always be in vogue when you hit the right note.
Kevin Costner
#79. I haven't read a lot of Westerns. But I wrote a Western. The influences were all cinematic.
Patrick DeWitt
#80. I'm crazy about westerns. I need to do a western once in a while. It's like you know, eating bread, eating pasta, drinking wine. It's in my blood. I need it.
Franco Nero
#81. 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.
Tom Selleck
#82. Westerns have often been considered the ugly stepchild of genre writing...
Johnny D. Boggs
#83. Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.
Laird Barron
#84. father loved to watch old westerns and the evening news,
Nicholas Sparks
#85. I knew that I was going to do Westerns. I like 'em.
Luke Perry
#86. In westerns, you meet a hardy bunch of characters. There is no jealousy on such pictures.
John Wayne
#87. On romance books: We might assume then that men, major consumers of thrillers, westerns, and detective fiction, enjoy being beaten up, tortured, shot, stabbed dragged by galloping horses, and thrown out of moving vehicles.
Daphne Clair
#88. I think my mom is the inspiration of me wanting to do film and TV and be an actor because she loved film so much. She loved, like, horror films and action films, so growing up, she loved watching all the Charles Bronson films and all the westerns.
Rick Gonzalez
#89. I love Westerns. I really love John Wayne. Frank Capra, any of his movies I love.
Rob Zombie
#90. I do feel that I need to do at least one more Western - I think you need to make three Westerns to call yourself a Western director.
Quentin Tarantino
#91. From the age of four or five. I went to see a lot of Westerns then. But it was silent movies and I loved everything that happened then.
Eli Wallach
#92. I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to.
Clifton Collins Jr.
#93. I was always a fan of the great old spaghetti Westerns, the Sergio Leone films. But the one that always sticks with me, that I just thought was brilliant and perfect is "Cat Ballou." Lee Marvin in "Cat Ballou."
Johnny Depp
#94. I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.
Mel Brooks
#95. Westerns were always my favorite things when I was little. And it always bothered me when cowboys were too clean in movies, or when they wore their guns like they had an outfit on. It always worked better when a guy looked sweaty and smelly; I hadda believe, I hadda believe that.
Michael Keaton
#96. I love westerns. John Ford is one of the 10 best directors.
Winona Ryder
#97. 'Red Dawn' was really the most fun I ever had making a movie, because I love Westerns, and I love the idea of being a tomboy, and riding horses and shooting guns.
Lea Thompson
#98. When I was growing up in the '60s I would have thought that westerns would last forever.
Joe Dante
#99. I liked doing comedies, but as I got older I was better suited to do Westerns. Because I think it becomes unattractive for an older fellow trying to look young, falling in love with attractive girls in those kinds of situations.
Joel McCrea
#100. There was that last blast of Westerns that came out in the Seventies, those Vietnam/Watergate Westerns where everything was about demystification. And I like that about those movies.
Quentin Tarantino
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