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Study up on the Eastern religions. They're the only ones that are realistic. There's no answer, see.
You want people walking away from the conversation with some kernel of wisdom or some kind of impact.
When man began to think he was a separate person with a separate soul, it created a violent situation.
But I'm not imaginative. I couldn't look into the future, like Star Wars or Robots or anything like that.
I know little stories that happen to people around me, and I can repeat that in a way that has some color.
You want people to feel something when you tell a story, whether they feel happy or whether they feel sad.
Heisenberg, Max Plank and Einstein, they all agreed that science could not solve the mystery of the universe.
It's just so frustrating when you're in a supporting role because you only get to express a part of yourself.
I don't blame anyone but myself for the kind of parts I got. To blame external circumstances is absolute folly.
People know you as an actor, and labels are so comfortable for people. That syndrome is always hard to get past.
Casting is a convoluted kind of trip. No one likes to be typed - even if you're a cab driver, or whatever you do.
The first music I remember hearing was the traditional songs of Kentucky - things like 'Roll Along Kentucky Moon.'
I could have been a lot more famous and played leading men and everything. For whatever reason, I didn't go for it.
I've passed up opportunities. I've avoided the spotlight. I've never been to Academy Awards, didn't relate to them.
What did we play in the Harry Dean Stanton Band? It was old blues and country - all covers. I never wrote anything.
I watch television. Game shows - I hate the hosts and the people on them, and I love the questions and the answers.
I do the same series of five exercises 21 times each day - an ancient Tibetan practice that stimulates your chakras.
I'm just dealing with what's happening, with what is. Joy, happiness, good, bad, all those terms are meaningless to me.
I'd love to meet Gandhi. And Christ. I'm sure he'd be interesting. And a lot different than a lot of people would think.
The first film I ever remember - I think my mother took me to it - was called 'She Married Her Boss' with Melvyn Douglas.
You get older. In the end, you end up accepting everything in your life - suffering, horror, love, loss, hate - all of it.
There is no answer. That's what Buddhism says. The Void, oblivion, no answer. To be in that state is an enlightened state.
I worked with the best directors - Martin Scorsese, John Huston, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock. Alfred Hitchcock was great.
Singing and acting are actually very similar things. Anyone can sing and anyone can be a film actor. All you have to do is learn.
You can do stuff onstage that you can't do offstage. You can be angry as hell and enraged and get away with it onstage, but not off.
I had to decide if I wanted to be a singer or an actor. I was always singing. I thought if I could be an actor, I could do all of it.
I know I've got the ability to bring a sense of menace to the screen. I have that specific competence, and it's generally kept me working.
My father and mother were not that compatible. I don't think they had a good wedding night, and I was the product of that. We weren't close.
I met Dylan on 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.' We buddied around for quite a while after that. We jammed together; he liked my Mexican songs.
I've got a pretty iconoclastic attitude about all institutions myself. And I just think the church was corrupted right after Christ was killed.
The most terrifying thing for most everybody in the whole Western World is to take responsibility for your own life and to experience real freedom.
'Alien?' Oh, yeah. I still get fanmail almost every week, pictures from all over the world on that movie. That's one of the most popular films I've done.
'Paris, Texas' is the first film that I've totally cared about, the first movie I totally wanted to do - and that after 27 years that I considered my prison term.
I always had a dramatic flair. I'd like to dress up like a cowboy, play make-believe. But I didn't realize acting was something I had to do until I got to college.
I had opportunities to be a lot more successful, but for some reason or other - the way I was particularly genetically wired - I turned down a lot of opportunities.
I am not into any religions. I have been mostly influenced by Eastern religions - Taoism, the essence of Hinduism and Buddhism. But my belief is not having any beliefs.
My sister tells me I began singing before I could even talk. My first performance was of a song called 'My Blue Heaven,' which I began singing when I was a year and a half.
I do all the classics, like Dylan, Kristofferson, Jimmy Reed, Mexican mariachi songs, some jazz songs from the '30s. Cole Porter's 'Begin the Beguine,' that's one of my favorites.
I think any performing artist can do films, or, as a matter of fact, anybody out there in the street can be a film actor with no experience whatsoever if you've got a good director.
I've worked with some of the best of them. Not just directors like Sam Peckinpah and David Lynch, but writers like Sam Shepard and singers like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.
For a musician to be good, he has to have humanity and care about the other guy. And as for blues - in a sense, black people have kept this country alive and given us our entire musical heritage.
I was in a movie called 'Twister,' and in it, I had to hit a golf ball off of a roof with a driving wood. The guy who owned the place where we shot showed me how to do it, and I hit the ball about 150 yards.
I realized early on that if I became an actor, I could play a writer and a sculptor and a painter and be all the things you just don't have time to be in your lifetime. I could get to learn about all of them.
I've always been a searcher, you know, a hunter. I'm certainly not the only one. They say actors shouldn't get political and everything, but you can't separate yourself. You can't disconnect yourself from anything.
I've always been a searcher - you know, a hunter. I'm certainly not the only one. They say actors shouldn't get political and everything, but you can't separate yourself. You can't disconnect yourself from anything.
I'm big into Eastern concepts. The horror of life, the love of children, the whole phantasmagoria - it's all meaningless. Be still, and see what happens. All of life unfolds perfectly. You have to get beyond consciousness.
I've never seen a Western that was really truthful. Most are just morality plays. Good guys and bad guys - and the good guys always win, whereas in reality most of the sheriffs were as bad as the gangsters they were after.
I've never seen a Western that was really truthful. Most are just morality plays. Good guys and bad guys - and the good guys always win, whereas in reality, most of the sheriffs were as bad as the gangsters they were after.
I sang barber shop harmony and sort of got into performing. And it just came naturally. Then, when I was in college after the war, I did a play, 'Pygmalion,' by George Bernard Shaw. And from then on, I knew that's what I wanted to do.
I can understand why it takes some people a long time to really be a singer. You have to find out, 'Why am I singing? What am I doing this for?' I do it because I enjoy it, and philosophically, music is a catalyst. It's a refining agent.