Billy Bob Quotes & Sayings

You can write when you're dyslexic, you just can't read it. But I started writing short stories as a child and I found the short story format a real nice one. I love short stories and I love short documentaries or short films of any kind. — Billy Bob Thornton

I don't have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing. — Billy Bob Thornton

I've never heard of anybody smoking a joint and going on a rampage. It makes you lie around on the floor and look at the ceiling. What's wrong with that? — Billy Bob Thornton

All I'm saying is we got plenty of Texans, and people from Montana, and New Jersey, and Wyoming, or Kansas City. We got plenty of actors. So we don't need some cat from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme, or whatever the hell it is, playing people from Montana. And in the reverse, they got plenty of people from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme that they don't need our asses coming over there trying to do British accents. — Billy Bob Thornton

If you're 25 years old dressed up like Superman at a comic book convention, that's great. If you're 78 and you're doing it, something's wrong. — Billy Bob Thornton

So we are headed for a time when there won't be anything but movies that are essentially made like video games, and actors will become obsolete, and then the big stars will be people who live in Brentwood or wherever it is, and they have a show called, I don't know, "Pool Parties of Brentwood" or something like that. — Billy Bob Thornton

Comedy is harder than drama, because with comedy you're expecting a result..you make them laugh. [If] they ain't laughing then you're screwed. — Billy Bob Thornton

But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now. — Billy Bragg

That was exciting man, because the killer is a different kind of character. There are a lot of people who wanted to play the role. I'm happy that Sony and CBS took a chance on a new face. I like the idea that he is from a different country. He has a British sensibility. I like that Billy Bob has a darker edge. — George Tillman Jr.

I got to work with Dustin Hoffman on a film called 'Billy Bathgate.' I got to work with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn and Bob Zemeckis on 'Death Becomes Her.' There are still a few actors out there that I would like to work with. — Bruce Willis

Movies now, you can watch a trailer for a movie on TV now and you're not sure if it's a video game or a movie. You have to wait till the end of it to see, oh, I see, those actors are in it, so that one's a movie. Oftentimes, it's based on a video game. — Billy Bob Thornton

My mom was a psychic. And there's a movie called The Gift that I'd written years ago with Cate Blanchett which is loosely based on my mom. — Billy Bob Thornton

Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing. — Billy Bob Thornton

If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps. — Billy Bob Thornton

Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we're the biggest weirdos on the block. — Billy Bob Thornton

It's not that I don't understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter. — Billy Bob Thornton

I figured I would have to tell someone to kiss my ass before it was all over, and I have
twice. — Billy Bob Thornton

I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other. — Billy Bob Thornton

I'm kind of sad and happy all the time. Just kind of like feeling, you know, full of life and confident, and at the same time terrified. I'm all of those things at once. — Billy Bob Thornton

If i knew my life would turn out this way, i would of killed myself a long time ago. — Billy Bob Thornton

If Michelle Pfeiffer gave Mel Gibson a vial of blood to wear around his neck in a movie you'd think it was terribly romantic, everyone would cry and they'd win awards. But in real life if someone does that they'd be considered weird. — Billy Bob Thornton

You can't criticize Bob Dylan's singing. You have to respect Billy Joel as a brilliant poet. You can't tell me there's a better rock band ever than Led Zeppelin. And if you speak during the Eagles' "Last Resort," we're done. I'm just asking for seven minutes. This stuff really matters, you know. — Charlie Sheen

When people wear shoes that don't fit them, it says something about their soul. Generally, I think it means they are good people. — Billy Bob Thornton

There's a picture of the real Coach Gary Gaines in the book and he's sitting in the locker room after a game, and he just looks so much like Billy Bob, that we went to him. — Peter Berg

There was a time when I could walk down the street, Hollywood Boulevard or Beverly Drive, and somebody would come up to you and they would say, "Excuse me," and you'd barely hear them, and you'd turn around and you'd say, "Yeah, how you doing?" and they'd say, "I'm really sorry to bother you, but my aunt is a big fan of yours, and would you mind terribly if you'd just sign this paper," or whatever it is, and you're happy to do that, and the people are pretty nice about it. — Billy Bob Thornton

People want the truth but they only want the truth so they can talk bad about you on the blog or on television. They want you to tell them the truth and it screws everybody. — Billy Bob Thornton

The movies I've made about the South, they were my experience and it's something that I know. — Billy Bob Thornton

Usually when you're playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory. — Billy Bob Thornton

Directing takes a good chunk of your life out. It's a very hard thing. As an actor, you go in for a couple of months and do your job, and then you move onto another one. As a director, it's with you for quite some time and you're responsible for the entire thing, whether the results are good or bad, or whether people throw darts at you or put you on a pedestal. — Billy Bob Thornton

It suits him because way back many years ago when Nikita Mikhalkov, the great Russian director, came, I said, "I want you to meet somebody." So I get Billy Bob from Malvern, Arkansas and Nikita Mikhalkov from Moscow. It's just two big talents meet. We sat for two or three hours and talked. It was great. He's the real deal, this guy. — Robert Duvall

They always say 'Is there going to be a sequel to Bad Santa?' and you know, I mean, a long time ago they would talk about, you know, we're going to do a sequel to that but it was never serious. And they said 'Would you do it?' and I said out of all the movies I've done, that was a lot of fun, and maybe I would do a sequel if it ever came up and it made sense, but I said I don't think that's ever going to happen. — Billy Bob Thornton

I've watched other directors as an actor and I picked up little things here and there about cameras, [but] I wouldn't consider myself the guy you'd want to hire to do Star Trek. — Billy Bob Thornton

I've really dreamed of doing television. All of us do television, coming up. But when I was coming up, television was a black hole for actors. Now, television has a certain cache. Now everybody wants to be on TV because they're doing adult dramas. If you're an actor, it's like, "Well, get me on television," because it's the only place you can do it and also make a living at it. If my kids need shoes, I better do a TV show because I damn sure don't make any money with independent films. — Billy Bob Thornton

Kids won't watch older movies - they want to see what's hip right now. — Billy Bob Thornton

I am fairly embraced by the Hollywood community, and I love making movies and I love acting, but I'm not real crazy about the Hollywood system. So the fact that they embrace me is a shock to me because I tell them to kiss my ass all the time. I don't understand why they haven't thrown me out on my ear. The other thing is I don't participate much. I have very few friends within the movie community. I hang out with some guys I've known forever. They're all broke and eat me out of house and home. But I stay home mostly and I don't go to the parties. Maybe that preserves me. — Billy Bob Thornton

Basically there are no stars anymore. The audience is the star. — Billy Bob Thornton

Billy Bob, as though he were in pain, doubled up on the bed like a jackknife; but his face was suddenly clear, his grubby boy-eyes twitching like candles. She's so cute, he whispered, she's the cutest dickens I ever saw, gee, to hell with it, I don't care, I'd pick all the roses in China.
Preacher would have picked all the roses in China, too. He was as crazy about her as Billy Bob. But Miss Bobbit did not notice them. — Truman Capote

What doesn't work is when we adopt some TEMPORARY habits, lose some weight and then pick our previous habits back up. Surprise, surprise. The weight always returns. Live one way, lose weight. Live another way, gain weight. Hhhmmm...how curious.

What also doesn't work is lying to yourself about what you ate and then falling into a crying heap on the scale, playing the victim. Poor you. Never mind you ate three biscuits with butter before your dinner even hit the table at Billy Bob's Feed trough last night--it was only a salad. Never mind you gobbled down five handfuls of M&Ms off the receptionist's desk between trips to the break room for a soda--it was diet! Never mind you drove through Coffee Planet on the way to work and downed a 32 oz. Italian-named mocha-choca-ya-ya worth a day's calories in some starving nations--you skipped the whipped cream and said "no thanks" to the Chihuahua-sized muffin.

I'm telling you, diets work. — Shannon Sorrels

I never expected to be a movie star. It's not that I didn't want to be, I didn't think about it. I wanted to be an actor. — Billy Bob Thornton

There's always one more notch and four more aces Billy, and you're playin' all alone. — Bob Dylan

I've been married five times, and people think that's some bizarre thing, yet I've got buddies who refuse to get married and have sex with 15 people a week. I'm like, "Which is better?" At least I was trying. — Billy Bob Thornton

Heavy role in the movies that I've done that I have loved and fit my soul; A Simple Plan, Monster's Ball, Sling Blade, One False Move, Bad Santa even. I mean Bad Santa is a comedy, and it's a very dark comedy, and it's become like iconic, you know. — Billy Bob Thornton

They went Indian file. First came the scouts, clever, graceful, quiet. They had rifles. Next came the antitank gunner, clumsy and dense, warning Germans away with a Colt .45 automatic in one hand and a trench knife in the other.
Last came Billy Pilgrim, empty-handed, bleakly ready for death. Billy was preposterous - six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches. He had no helmet, no overcoat, no weapon, and no boots. On his feet were cheap, low-cut civilian shoes which he had bought for his father's funeral. Billy had lost a heel, which made him bob up-and-down, up-and-down. The involuntary dancing, up-and-down, up-and-down, made his hip joints sore. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

When I was a teenager, I read the bible cover-to-cover, and I found the Old Testament, it's a pretty bloody history book. — Billy Bob Thornton

I can't imagine laying a finger on my kids. I go the other way and probably because my father was so abusive. — Billy Bob Thornton

The thing about a motion picture is that look of film on a big screen takes you into a magical. — Billy Bob Thornton

Everything is very convenient now and it would be real nice if somehow people started going back to the movie theater. And it's people of my generation. It's their fault in a lot of ways, people over 40. It's their fault that the only movies are about robots and beautiful vampires. It's wild, all vampires are beautiful. — Billy Bob Thornton

I know it's boring to say this but I always start with the script. I mean if it's well written and it's a character that I haven't necessarily played before. — Billy Bob Thornton

I've been largely an improvisational actor for most of my career. — Billy Bob Thornton

You know, what's popular? Okay, vampires are very popular. Let me make my vampire movie. I'm not saying you can't make a vampire movie. But if you're going to do one do something crazy. I mean don't just get a bunch of, like I said, models and make them into vampires so you'll get an audience. You know maybe get some ugly vampires for a change. — Billy Bob Thornton

I grew up in Arkansas and that's the law. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so I was raised as a coach's son and I was a baseball player back in Arkansas, and I lived in Texas, too, so I was just surrounded by sports. So that's what I was going to do: Pitch for the St Louis Cardinals. I had no idea I was going to be an actor. So I got my collar bone broken in the Kansas City Royals training camp. And once I got hurt I started doing other things for a while. — Billy Bob Thornton

Television is making, there was in independent film renaissance late '80s through the mid-90's. It was an amazing time. Television is doing that right now. So that's why everybody wants to do it. I mean if you're writing stuff like, you know, Fargo, or True Detective, or any of these things that are on, Breaking Bad, there are no rules in television. — Billy Bob Thornton

On TV you can, you know you can cram, you know, 30 people into a closet and have an orgy, and then they can all shoot up, and everybody has cigarettes in their nostrils and their ears. They don't care. So yeah, television is amazing right now. — Billy Bob Thornton

My mom is such a big supporter of mine. She still is, and always was. So I got the sort of encouragement from that side of the family. — Billy Bob Thornton

Well I loved Little League; so all the memories are pretty fond but I broke my thumb. That wasn't a lot of fun. I think probably the first time I pitched [I started out as a first baseman] and the first game I pitched in Little League, I struck out 10 batters. I had a curve ball a little early [laughs]. You're not really supposed to have one when you're 12, but I did, so I first game I struck out 10 batters. That's possibly my fondest memory. — Billy Bob Thornton

I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else. — Billy Bob Thornton

I always say if you're going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I'm not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there's some French actors. Just get one of them, you know. — Billy Bob Thornton

Anytime you get a chance to play some extreme character, in any direction, it's always a great blessing. — Billy Bob Thornton

Truth is, we offered it to Tom Hanks, which pretty much every movie in America does, but Tom passed. Billy Bob said that Hanks recently called and said he's voting for all of us for Oscars, he loved the film. — Peter Berg

Life is magical and I guess my thing is I wish that people wanted that magic. — Billy Bob Thornton

Reality shows are usually created by people doing and saying stupid things. — Billy Bob Thornton

When I was growing up, when I was 11 years old I was listening to The Mothers of Invention. You know, I mean I was a Frank Zappa fan in Arkansas. — Billy Bob Thornton

My process started when I was born. The process is life experience. I believe that what makes you an artist, or at least an artist who can communicate the ideas that they want to get across, are people that have life experience. — Billy Bob Thornton

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? — Truman Capote

We're not encouraging idols other than on the TV show, you know and that's the wrong way to do it. If we had become famous from a contest show we'd be embarrassed in my generation. But if that's the benchmark then I thought well young people who want to be filmmakers, or musicians, or whatever are screwed. But maybe they're not because what they're doing is they're creating their own thing. — Billy Bob Thornton

Marketing is the devil. — Billy Bob Thornton

I think I fully commit myself to any role to the extent to which I can. In other words there's some roles that maybe it's just not there, in other words on the page. You know, I mean your job is you need to play the governor and that's what you do. I mean I'm not going to stay up all night if I'm playing a functional role. And I've played a couple of functional roles. And so I'm not going to do anything other, look he's a functional guy. He says hey mister, you forgot your hat. — Billy Bob Thornton

I'll always consider myself a Southerner. A lot of people put California down, but my dreams were realized there. — Billy Bob Thornton

I always wished there was somebody like the Coen Brothers and they appeared. And so yeah, my favorite role that I've ever done was in The Man Who Wasn't There. That's my very favorite character I've ever played. — Billy Bob Thornton

My dad didn't hug me every day and say he loved me and anything like that. — Billy Bob Thornton

I've lived in California for half of my life. It's weird, everyone thinks of me as this guy who's from the South ... I'm really a Californian. — Billy Bob Thornton

I'm not much of a drinker, so I'm going to eat seven pounds of pork. — Billy Bob Thornton

I was the fattest baby in Clark County, Arkansas. They put me in the newspaper. It was like a prize turnip. — Billy Bob Thornton

I attribute all my success to ignorance. If you don't ever think about not getting where you want to be, I think it helps you out. — Billy Bob Thornton

Dad had a music store, and he'd often bring home comedy albums that I would listen to. I started listening to Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby, and developing taste. They really influenced my style of comedy. — Billy Crystal

When you weigh 135 pounds and you're telling people who are 6'4 and 250 pounds to get out of your way, how do you do that? Well, a lot of that is in the eyes. — Billy Bob Thornton

I think maybe I was instrumental in taking the stereotype out of the Southern actor is some ways. I would hope my legacy would be as a serious actor who told the truth and did parts based on the quality of part and not necessarily the money. — Billy Bob Thornton

If you love somebody let them know every day. — Billy Bob Thornton

I have been fortunate to get some really good scripts over the years and I haven't turned down anything that I regretted so far. And my manager who I've been with for over 25 years is very good at knowing what I should and shouldn't do a lot of times. — Billy Bob Thornton

I always have an idea before we even start the movie because if you hire the wrong person, within a couple of days you're going to know that and you're going to be really panicked. — Billy Bob Thornton

I don't know how to type so I handwrite everything. — Billy Bob Thornton

Getting the nomination is like gravy. Winning would be like whatever is better than gravy. — Billy Bob Thornton

Preacher spit on the ground and swaggered over to Billy Bob. Come on, he said, just as though nothing had happened, She's a hard one, she is, she don't want nothing but to make trouble between two good friends. For a moment it looked as if Billy Bob was going to join him in a peaceful togetherness; but suddenly, coming to his senses, he drew back and made a gesture. The boys regarded each other a full minute, all the closeness between them turning an ugly color: you can't hate so much unless you love, too. — Truman Capote

Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that. — Billy Bob Thornton

Playing normal-looking characters really intimidatesme. I got into acting to play anyone but me. — Billy Bob Thornton

When I was coming up in the '80s television, if you were on television that meant either you were a young actor just coming up like I was, or you were an older actor whose career was over and you had to go on television. — Billy Bob Thornton

You read something and you just feel this makes sense. And sometimes before you even read it you have a feeling that yeah, I'm probably gonna do this one. — Billy Bob Thornton

When I saw that show Lost I learned something. Other than one sort of big dude if you're in an airplane crash only models survive. So you know sit next to somebody pretty, but anyhow. — Billy Bob Thornton

I'm so much more than just Angelina [Jolie's] brother. I'm also Jon Voight's son and Billy Bob Thorton's brother-in-law. — James Haven

The schoolteacher asks Billy Bob: "If you have 12 sheeps and one jumps over the fence, how many sheeps do you have left?"

Billy Bob answers, "None."

"Well" says the teacher, "you sure don't know your subtraction."

"Maybe not," Billy Bob replies, "but i darn sure know my sheeps. — Benjamin Graham

I never wanted to write a book, and people have asked me for years to do it. — Billy Bob Thornton

I think people can live a religious life and yet believe in things maybe outside the box a little bit. — Billy Bob Thornton

The only times you'll see me in terms of the movie business is when I have to go to the premieres of my own movies. I don't go to see ones that aren't mine because I don't even like going to mine. — Billy Bob Thornton

People a lot of times say that you know it must be hard to direct yourself. That's a myth. It's easier to direct yourself. There's no middle man, you know. — Billy Bob Thornton

I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture. — Billy Bob Thornton

I'm as highly insecure as a human can be. — Billy Bob Thornton

Directing is a big responsibility to take on. I think I'm only good at doing things I know very well. I don't direct movies because I get offered the new vampire movie or science fiction movie. I don't get offered those, anyway, but if I did, I would just tell 'em, "Look, I'm the wrong guy." I only do things about people and situations, and I do the ones that I think I'm the best guy for the job on, which is usually something I generate myself. — Billy Bob Thornton

I actually am a phobic twitchy sort of nervous guy. — Billy Bob Thornton

Necessity is the mother of delusion. For true love to exist there must be nothing that is necessary to it. Lovers have to live happily ever after, no matter what happens. — Billy Bob Stone

I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers. — Billy Bob Thornton