Quotes from Tommy Lee Jones

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

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.

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

You are going to grow up whether you want to or not. It requires no effort.

The quality of one's emotional life changes over the years, doesn't it? But the basic instincts and desires, greed and hope, seem to remain constant. In the larger scope of things, there's a sense of fulfillment to living a creative life. So I guess that's what keeps me going.

Characters with no integrity are just as interesting as characters with lots of integrity.

I look upon pride as a sin.

I'm an introspective guy when there's money in it.

My grandmother grew up in a 19th-century world, and my daughter has grown up in a 21st-century world, and some issues, problems, dilemmas that these women face have not changed.

Al Gore has been one of my closest friends since the day we met, on the first day of college, 35 years ago.

Football was a wonderful experience for me. It was a means of, oh, I don't know, sustaining for much of my youth. In times of trouble, I've always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.

As it turns out, my grandmother, my mother, my wife, and my daughter are all women, and I like those people. I'm concerned about the issues that they face in their lives. So I'm a feminist, but that's not all I am.

I enjoy acting more and more than when I was 17.

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

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

How do you play someone in a movie? How do you do that? It's impossible - unless you know how. How do you cut somebody open and take out their appendix and sew them back up and watch them get well? That's impossible - unless you know how.

My education as a filmmaker has been entirely practical. I started working professionally in the film business in 1970, and I've been at it steadily since, and I pay a lot of attention.

If you don't hurt anybody or try to steal anything, you'll be fine in the South.

Normal people with normal problems can be hilarious.

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.

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.

I know a lot of cowboys and I've done a little work on ranches with cattle, and those people become your friends, and keep their word.

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.

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.