Actor

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.

Plot is just not my gift. I'm fascinated with complex characters, and that doesn't mix well with complex plots. And by the way, when the plot is simple, you can move one piece around and make it feel fresh. Hell or High Water's a good example: I don't tell you why the brothers are robbing the bank.

I think that marriage of music and picture is so vital, especially in a film that's almost exclusively exteriors.

I was going to be the head wrangler at a ranch in Wyoming, and the reason I didn't take the job is because I couldn't have my family there - the family had to stay in town. I just wasn't willing to do that.

While I feel it's important for films to examine our society, I don't particularly like watching the films that do it.

It's very hard for me to go to the movies because I know all the tricks, and I know everybody. I don't watch many at all. And the ones I do watch are generally much older films.

I mean... directing is a holy, unpleasant experience, to be perfectly honest.

Sugarcoating doesn't do anybody any good.

I learned a tremendous amount about dialogue because I suffered as an actor.

I've been in some bad TV shows and suffered through so much poor writing.

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

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

I watched a lot of old movies. Clint Eastwood movies, a lot of John Wayne films, a lot of movies that celebrated the region of where I lived.

Don't try and make a movie for someone else. You have to make it for you and trust that you're not that unique. And that'll matter to other people as well.

I broke a lot of conventions. Look, I spent a long time as an actor. I spent a lot of time playing pretty ordinary arcs.

I work very hard to line up stereotypes and then smash them with a hammer.

I think my mission, if I could call it that, as a storyteller is to try and find ways to show how similar we are and not how different we are.

I think film cannot only teleport you to places you don't know, but it can help you see people you thought were one way and in fact are another. They can allow us to examine ourselves.

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.

I learned a tremendous amount about dialogue because I suffered as an actor.