Quotes & Sayings About Westerns

We're not nearly as violent as the westerns. — Moe Howard

The marriage between the fantasy and the Westerns is that thing of, if people think you're the best gunslinger around, they're going to come looking for you. — Kieran Bew

I was always the bad guy in westerns. I played more bad guys than you can shake a stick at until I played the Professor. Then I couldn't get a job being a bad guy. — Russell Johnson

Studios, because they are investing a great deal of money in movies, they want a guarantee that when they hire somebody that person can deliver for them. Everything is fear based, so they pigeonhole people. But I've written everything, from Westerns to sci-fi to dramedy, I've done it all. — Melissa Rosenberg

It's been fifteen years since I've killed a man. At least a man against whom I held a grudge. — L.J. Martin

There is no other genre that deals with America better, in a subtextual way, than the Westerns being made in the different decades. The '50s Westerns very much put forth an Eisenhower idea of America, whereas the Westerns of the '70s were very cynical about America. — Quentin Tarantino

Riding a bull must be a bit like flying an ultralight. You get up there and have an exhilarating ride, but then you still have to get down. — Susan Spence

With Westerns you have the landscape is important, and it's empty, and only you populate it. When you populate it, you can tell any kind story that Shakespeare told, you can tell in a Western. — Lawrence Kasdan

But if one could go back in time, I'd love to have been directed by Howard Hawks, who's one of my great heroes. One of the greatest directors there ever was. He directed probably one of the greatest westerns of all time in 'Rio Bravo'. — Stephen Fry

The negative attitudes toward the genres - romance, science-fiction, westerns, suspense, etc. - are fallout from the academic world's long-standing fascination with existential philosophy and modern theories of psychology and sociology. — Jayne Ann Krentz

My parents were huge fans of westerns, European cinema, and horror in particular. They wouldn't just show me kids' films. — Hideo Kojima

I was rather shaken by all the green trees. I always am. It gets me. I don't want to be funny about it but I am. I loved seeing all the westerns, but I had asthma and couldn't go anywhere, but I loved watching them in Technicolor and seeing the cowboys and the landscapes of Monument Valley and you'd see the forests of the Anthony Mann films and think, 'wow, that's fantastic', but I could never go there! — Martin Scorsese

I can't go to bed with John Wayne, so I do the next best thing: I go to bed with my girlfriend, who once met the great man. That's how much I love westerns. — Clive Sinclair

I'm not a great science fiction fan myself. I probably feel that way about Westerns. Like I used to play Cowboys and Indians, they can act out Will and the Robot. — Mark Goddard

When you're young, you want to make every kind of film: musicals, Westerns, horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small, personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters. — Jason Reitman

In our world you got your mystery and suspense stories . . . your science fiction stories . . . your Westerns . . . your fairy tales. Get it?" "Yes," Roland said. "Do people in your world always want only one story-flavor at a time? Only one taste in their mouths?" "I guess that's close enough," Susannah said. "Does no one eat stew?" Roland asked. — Stephen King

I never got in this business, in cinema, to make horror movies. They arrived on my doorstep and I got typecast. Which was fine, I enjoy it, but I got into this business to make westerns. And the kind of westerns I used to see, they died. So that didn't work out. — John Carpenter

I decided to write Westerns because there was a terrific market for Westerns in the '50s. There were a lot of pulp magazines, like 'Dime Western' and '10 Story Western' that were still being published. The better ones paid two cents a word. And I thought, 'I like Westerns.' — Elmore Leonard

There was that last blast of Westerns that came out in the Seventies, those Vietnam/Watergate Westerns where everything was about demystification. And I like that about those movies. — Quentin Tarantino

In the John Wayne movies, the Indians were savages that were trying to scalp you. That culture has really suffered because of the stereotype you see in those westerns. — Ricky Schroder

The Wild West didn't have much in the way of forensics; when you saw the bullet hole you'd say, 'That's prob'ly what kilt 'im. — P.K. Vandcast

What made us different from other westerns was the fact that 'Gunsmoke' wasn't just action and a lot of shooting; they were character-study shows. — James Arness

You know, Alundra Blayze, with her looks could star in TV westerns ... if she had two more legs. — Jerry Lawler

Everything is a burned book, my dear maestro. Music, the tenth dimension, the fourth dimension, cradles, the production of bullets and rifles, Westerns: all burned books. — Roberto Bolano

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. — Arthur C. Clarke

Why westerns get segregated into a genre in Hollywood, I don't know ... It's just good entertainment. — Tom Selleck

There's a level where the themes of a film are very relevant to me and also the idea of finding out how relevant one genre is to another. I think that westerns and samurai films and superhero films have a lot in common. It's just that the scale of the visuals in tentpole films can sometimes overwhelm the drama. — James Mangold

That era provided a profusion of wonderful actors and actresses to admire - and not always the ones remembered by posterity. Take Joel McCrea, for instance, a real cowboy and a good actor who could excel in westerns like Union Pacific or The Virginian, but who was also wonderful in comedies like The Palm Beach Story for Preston Sturges - and comedy is the hardest thing an actor can do. — Robert Wagner

As a child, I was subjected to a lot of spaghetti Westerns and hated them. I wanted the Indians to win - or just not be so sad! — Kara Walker

I watched Westerns from the time I was a girl. My dad was a big Western fan. I always loved Clint Eastwood movies and 'Westworld', where the guy gets trapped in a western-themed amusement park. The western motif was fascinating to me. — Kimberly Elise

I stared at him for a moment, sifting through everything he'd just said and trying to find an appropriate response, but the only thing I could think of was, "Westerns?" "Really? That's all you got?" "Are you sixty-five?" "Shut the fuck up. — Nicole Jacquelyn

If you talk about genres - I don't care if you're talking about war, Westerns, science fiction, horror, fantasy, humor, romance - anything you can find, strolling the aisles of a Borders or a Barnes & Noble, I can bring you many comic books representing each genre. — Michael Uslan

The only moment football really stops is with a penalty kick - and that is a moment that is really dramatic. A penalty kick becomes a Western duel. It's two guys facing each other. Destiny and potential death, whether metaphorical or literal. That's why in the penalty kick at the end of the film, I shot it like an homage to the Sergio Leone Westerns I saw when I was a kid, especially The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. — Carlos Cuaron

You are a pearl of great price to me, but there are times when you are an almighty trial to those who love you. — Charles Portis

When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers' films and westerns and stuff like that. That's where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure. — Alden Ehrenreich

Your basic physical makeup does influence the parts you're offered. If you're big, they cast you either dumb or tough, although there are exceptions. Clint Eastwood and James Arness carved out niches for themselves in Westerns. I just hope I won't be faced with doing 'Li'l Abner' in dinner theater for the rest of my career. — Bill Fagerbakke

There were movies to go see at the Gem, which has long since been torn down; science fiction movies like Gog with Richard Egan and westerns with Audie Murphy (Teddy saw every movie Audie Murphy made at least three times; he believed Murphy was almost a god) and war movies with John Wayne. There were games and endless bolted meals, lawns to mow, places to run to, walls to pitch pennies against, people to clap you on the back. And now I sit here trying to look through an IBM keyboard and see that time, trying to recall the best and the worst of that green and brown summer, and I can almost feel the skinny, scabbed boy still buried in this advancing body and hear those sounds. But — Stephen King

Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy. — Roger Ebert

I do feel that I need to do at least one more Western - I think you need to make three Westerns to call yourself a Western director. — Quentin Tarantino

Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre. — Val Kilmer

The thing that influenced me most in relation to 'Nanny McPhee' were the Westerns I watched with my father. All the Spaghetti Westerns; all the Virginians; all the High Chaparrals. Because if you think about the form, it's a stranger from out of town. — Emma Thompson

When I was growing up in the '60s I would have thought that westerns would last forever. — Joe Dante

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

In westerns, you meet a hardy bunch of characters. There is no jealousy on such pictures. — John Wayne

I think they are very important because westerns have a code and a symbolism. — Aaron Eckhart

I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films. — Mel Brooks

I love westerns. John Ford is one of the 10 best directors. — Winona Ryder

I like action films, not exclusively, but I like Samurai films. I like Westerns. Not so much war pictures, but a few. I like kinetic cinema. — Alexander Payne

The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate. — Hugh Mackay

I love westerns, I'd love to make more of them. — Jeff Bridges

I actually don't like westerns much. I like good westerns, but it isn't my preferred genre. There are all kinds of westerns: acid westerns, '70s westerns, Nicholas Ray's neurotic westerns. The ones I tend to like are nutso westerns. — Andrew Dominik

Westerns are closer to art than anything else in the motion picture business. — John Wayne

Sergio Leone was a big influence on me because of the spaghetti westerns. — Quentin Tarantino

Westerns are a type of picture which everybody can see and enjoy. Westerns always make money. And they always increase a star's fan following. — Randolph Scott

Corrigan crept up to the bar, cautiously moving around it. It looked like he was copying all the moves he'd seen in old cop movies and westerns, and doing it rather badly. He lowered the pistol. There was no one behind the bar. There was however, an open trapdoor. And that would mean the bounty hunter was - .
"Don't move!" Came Beck's distant, slightly muffled, barked order. "My turn, I think! — Christina Engela

I've never been specifically attached to westerns, but there are those I like - one of the best westerns I've seen is 'Unforgiven.' I think the genre has something extremely powerful that can allow them to talk about good and evil in a very straight way. — Mads Mikkelsen

Spaghetti Westerns are really brutal and operatic with a surreal quality to the violence. — Quentin Tarantino

All the traditional westerns are about choice and the individual. When progress comes it's much more difficult to define the individual in that world. — Gore Verbinski

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

I think my mom is the inspiration of me wanting to do film and TV and be an actor because she loved film so much. She loved, like, horror films and action films, so growing up, she loved watching all the Charles Bronson films and all the westerns. — Rick Gonzalez

Westerns just thematically, as a genre, have kind of a few tent poles that I really admire, and one of them is this perception that life was simpler back then. And with that perception goes that people were good or people were bad. You survived by your strengths or you perished by your weaknesses. — Kiefer Sutherland

Clint Eastwood said, the only things America has contributed to civilization are the western and jazz. And I don't think westerns are bad, but lots of people make great cinema. But jazz is right there. — Robert Wyatt

I'm a big fan of period pieces, and I'm a big fan of the old-time westerns. — Giancarlo Esposito

Nothing ever changes as far as Westerns are concerned. They are the same today as they were years ago. — Glenn Ford

Westerns have often been considered the ugly stepchild of genre writing... — Johnny D. Boggs

Westerns were always my favorite things when I was little. And it always bothered me when cowboys were too clean in movies, or when they wore their guns like they had an outfit on. It always worked better when a guy looked sweaty and smelly; I hadda believe, I hadda believe that. — Michael Keaton

By the end of the 50s, everything began to collapse and, little by little, I lost all of my work. I lost Rex, the Wonder Dog and all the westerns. — Gil Kane

My stories may seem to be the stories of men, but a check of my books will show that I have probably written the stories of more strong women than any other writer ... [examples include] Miss Nesselrode of The Lonesome Gods, Ruth Macken of Bendigo Shafter, Echo Sackett of Ride the River, Em Talon of Ride the Dark Trail are some ... [and] one of my favorites is Miss Jessica Trescott of Matagorda. (The Sackett Companion) — Louis L'Amour

I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters. — Martin Scorsese

You have to turn a blind eye to politics in nearly all Westerns. — Clive Sinclair

Hollywood cools, and when it cools you have to go to where the work is. I ran off to Italy to do spaghetti westerns. — Tab Hunter

In France, it's always about life, normal life. We always stick with these realistic things. So when French people are dreaming about American movies, they go and see the thrillers, and Westerns, and science fiction, huge entertaining movies. — Berenice Bejo

I guess after Dances With Wolves they probably tried some derivative westerns, and if they didn't work, they said the western is dead and moved on to something else. — Tom Selleck

If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you're going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit. — Terry Pratchett

Suddenly, Westerns, which were our action films and what the working man went to see to blow off steam and have a good time, became boring to most people growing up from the Eighties on, because they're kind of pastoral. — Quentin Tarantino

I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns. — Ben Mendelsohn

I watched westerns when I was a kid, like everybody else, but I wasn't a total nerd or geek about it. I kind of fell in love with westerns heavily when I started watching Sergio Leone's westerns. — Mads Mikkelsen

Westerns was why I got into the business. I grew up on a small farm in California and all I ever wanted to do was to play gangsters and cowboys in movies. — Brion James

I really liked the Mariachi singing in Westerns. — Harry Dean Stanton

When western books are set in the present, critics seldom call them westerns: the national myth allows the West only a past. — Gerald W. Haslam

I love Westerns! — Barry Corbin

If you look at the great Westerns, and at Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, they all contain elements in common: a harsh landscape; demons or outlaws trying to stop or kill the protagonist; and there are mythical legends at their core, innate in all cultures. — Simon Toyne

I just love westerns. One of my favourite actors is John Wayne, probably one of the most underrated actors there's ever been. He's quite an incredible actor. — Ray Winstone

I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns. — Shia Labeouf

I love Westerns. They're a unique creation of American mythology. — Simon Toyne

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) is probably the most influential film of my generation. It's the personification of good and evil and the way it opened up the world to space adventure, the way westerns had to our parents' generations, left an indelible imprint. So, in a way, everything that any of us does is somehow directly or indirectly affected by the experience of seeing those first three films. — J.J. Abrams

What the fuck is wrong with Westerns? Westerns are the shit." "Oh yeah, tell me, why are westerns THE SHIT?" Ti said, air quoting around THE SHIT. "Because back in the old west, the men were real men. They took charge of the situation. They handled their business by earning respect and gunning down anyone who stood in their way. Cowboys were the first guys to have the balls to be lawless and say fuck-all to society. — T.M. Frazier

One of my favorites of all time was with Jim Jarmusch, called 'Dead Man.' I was in that with Johnny Depp. I ride really well, and I shoot a gun really well. I love the genre. Once I did Westerns, I was hooked. — Lance Henriksen

People had their image of what a cowboy was, ... A lot of it was perpetuated by the media presentations of the cowboys in fiction and old Westerns. And because of the tenure of the times, African-Americans were left out. As a result, reality was distorted. — Philip Roberts

I love westerns. I've always wanted to do a western. — Patrick Warburton

Eventually I would like to touch all the genres. I would like to do some detective stories, and I want to do a Western. I would want to do humorous Westerns. — Sergio Aragones

But of course the Western changed along with America's view of itself, from some sort of heroic country, where everybody's free, to the spiritually fucked-up defiled place it really is, and now you got jive Italians, if you can feature that, making the only Westerns worth seeing anymore because white America's just too fucking confused, can't figure out whether to embrace the myth or the anti-myth, so in a country where folks always figured you can escape your past, now the word is out that this is the country where you can do no such thing, this is the one place where, like the jive that finally becomes impossible to distinguish from the anti-jive, honor becomes impossible to distinguish from betrayal or just, you know, stone cold murder ... — Steve Erickson

I just watched so many Westerns as a kid that you end up using archetypes and sort of tropes of that genre, because there's a language there and you can twist it and turn it on its head or play to it or go sideways at any time. — Gore Verbinski

My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read. — John Edgar Wideman

I was writing a film criticism book on Sergio Corbucci, the director who did the original Django. So, I was kind of getting immersed in his world. Towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds press tour I was in Japan. Spaghetti Westerns are really popular there, so I picked up a bunch of soundtracks and spent my day off listening to all these scores. And all of a sudden the opening scene [Django] just came to me. — Quentin Tarantino

I would love to do a Western again if Westerns came back into fashion. — Bruce Boxleitner

Westerns are very difficult to predict whether they'll reach an audience or not. — Barry Pepper

Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library. — Laird Barron

I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood, but the Westerns I draw from most directly come from an earlier period in Hollywood. I actually look back at movies like 'Rio Bravo' and others I've liked over the years, and I capture pictures from the movies and use them as a reference for the scenes I create. — Steve Sheinkin

I initially studied literature [in France], and then I went to cinema school. I discovered the Cinematheque, and saw not only action movies and westerns, but also lots of serious movies. — Costa-Gavras