Tommy Lee Jones Quotes

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

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

As an actor to watch an audience of people howl together in a single mind as a result of work you’ve done together with friends is a privilege.

I want to photograph what I see and put it in a dramatic context. I’m an actor and a writer, and I want to tell these stories and present these shapes, colors and movements as I see them, as I see them serve a narrative. As I see that narrative serve an audience. That’s what I want to do.

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

You can’t instruct an audience to laugh, but what you can do is read well and understand the spirit and subtleties, if there are any, in the dialogue.

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.

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.

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

Partnerships are good engines for narrative.

No, I don’t think about the myth of the West. It’s not the kind of thinking I do. That’s more suited to people who live in big towns on the West Coast or East Coast, people who stay under a roof, in a room, all the time.

Normal people with normal problems can be hilarious.

No director wants to be directed, but no good director… would shy away from the good ideas of others.

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.

My home town is very small and very remote and we don’t have a movie house.

Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They’re underused.