Peckinpah Quotes & Sayings

I regard everything with irony, including the face I see in the mirror when I wake up in the morning. — Sam Peckinpah

Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: "Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?" She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. "Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?" This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War.
I love that line. That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding. — Haruki Murakami

I created 'The Westerner' because of anger - anger at never-miss sheriffs, always-right marshalls, whitewashed gunfighters ... anger at TV's quick-draw tin gods who stand behind a tin star or ten cents' worth of righteous anger and justify their skill and slaughter with a self-conscious grin or a minute's worth of bad philosophy. — Sam Peckinpah

I've always been a fan of Westerns, but my favorite kind of Westerns mostly were Sam Peckinpah's Westerns, and they mainly took place in the West that was changing. — Roger Deakins

I made a film where nobody got shot and nobody went to see it. — Sam Peckinpah

All I want is to enter my house justified, — Sam Peckinpah

I worked for Sam Peckinpah on quite a bit of action in his films, and he got excited once in a while. — Richard Farnsworth

I'm a student of violence because I'm a student of the human heart. — Sam Peckinpah

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' made me want to make films. I am wild about the films of John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Howard Hawks and Sam Peckinpah. — Neil Marshall

If I was ever gonna remake a Peckinpah film, it would be 'Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.' That's my favorite Peckinpah film. — Joe Carnahan

Yeah, Dundee was great. It was a great film. I fell in love with my Mexican wife on Dundee. — Sam Peckinpah

The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws - everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he's only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don't say to me we're not violent. — Sam Peckinpah

Oh, I find it very easy to fall in love. — Sam Peckinpah

The Price Is Right can really get me going. — Sam Peckinpah

I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah. — Ann Nocenti

Well, killing a man isn't clean and quick and simple. It's bloody and awful. And maybe if enough people come to realize that shooting somebody isn't just fun and games, maybe we'll get somewhere. — Sam Peckinpah

Why should I give you an interview? All you journalists are plagiarists. — Sam Peckinpah

I want to be able to make westerns like Akira Kurosawa makes westerns. — Sam Peckinpah

All Sam Peckinpah ever did in his movies was show that getting hit on the chin doesn't sound like [makes a small popping noise]. When one grown man hits another grown man in the face, it splatters like an overripe tomato. And it's not fun getting killed. It's bloody and gory and altogether unpleasant. That's all Sam Peckinpah ever did. — Harry Crews

The end of a picture is always an end of a life. — Sam Peckinpah

The western is a universal frame within which it's possible to comment on today. — Sam Peckinpah

There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness. — Sam Peckinpah