Quotes from Taylor Sheridan

Some of the most fascinating scenes in 'Unforgiven,' for me, is that scene with Gene Hackman where he's talking about the Duke of Death that Richard Harris played, and he's basically demolishing this myth of this man very unwesternly - not what you expect in a western.

I'm a big believer in,'If anyone can understand my politics, I've failed.' If you can get a sense of which side of the fence I'm on, then I'm not doing a service. I'm preaching, and that's not my job.

I think I was a decent actor, but it took a lot of work for me to make a choice on how to read a line.

'Sicario' was successful, but it was successful because Denis and the producers were, you know, they were very lean. It was very lean filmmaking.

I don't write tracking shots in my screenplays or any camera directions, but I do try to give a sense of how the action is moving.

Until you've been to Cannes, it's hard to describe to someone the magnitude of that festival.

As a filmmaker, you have to stand in front of what you did and make choices that you could do with a clear conscience.

You know that saying, 'You broke it, you bought it'? With horses, if you don't make sure it's a good fit... they tend to break you.

I thought of Jeff Bridges in 'Hell or High Water' and Ben Foster, and I kept trying very hard not to, because you're terrified you're going to write this thing that then feeds specifically to this one person that then won't do it.

Most of us don't confront pure anything. What our life does involve is a whole lot of 60/40 and 70/30.

There's not a lot of pure evil in the world, but it's amazing how little it takes to do great damage.

To me, a purely good individual or purely bad individual, that's a comic book - that's a fantasy - and I don't do fantasy.

I don't know if I've ever met anyone that's purely good or purely evil myself. I think most of us live with some varying degrees between the two.

I had to push exposition through dialogue, which is really, really hard for an actor do.

I let characters be human and flawed and relatable. When we do things that aren't that great, we can understand it.

I had three attorneys dedicated solely to find the statistic of the number of missing Native American women on reservations. Any reservation, not just 'Wind River.' They don't exist. The federal government, which is responsible for the reservations, don't keep those stats.

I've been very fortunate with my three spec scripts - which is sort of my thematic trilogy of the American Frontier. With 'Sicario', 'Hell or High Water' and then 'Wind River' - which is the third - there were no rewrites. It was the first draft for all three.

With 'Wind River,' I became fascinated with the notion of how you overcome a tragedy - accepting it, making whatever peace you can with it - without ever knowing what really happened.

I finished 'Hell or High Water' and started writing 'Wind River' literally the next day.

People in Texas wear cowboy hats; they're good at keeping the sun off your neck and face.

You set something in modern-day Texas, which is so identifiable as the Old West, and everyone's wearing guns, so it looks like it's going to be, by default, partially considered a western.

Every writer has written a spec. It's the first thing you write, and it basically stands as a means of, 'Here's an example of how I tell stories.' It's almost like a business card.

Where having been an actor was extremely helpful to me was in casting. That's where I think a director who has acted can really shine, and casting is the most important thing you do.

I made a very conscious decision to quit acting. I was on a series, and we were in the process of renegotiating. They had an idea of what they thought I was worth, and I had an idea that was quite different.