Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me.

OK, you did two things wrong. First, you asked a question, and second, you asked another question.

Things change. They always do, it’s one of the things of nature. Most people are afraid of change, but if you look at it as something you can always count on, then it can be a comfort.

What I said the other day, you looking like me, that ain’t true. You ain’t ugly like me, it’s just that we both have got scars.

I’ve killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I’m here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.

I’m gonna take myself a nap. Please don’t wake me up unless you’re sure we’re going to crash, because… I wouldn’t want to miss something like that.

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.

I have strong feelings about gun control. If there’s a gun around, I want to be controlling it.

You want to play the game, you’d better know the rules, love.

With all due respect, sir, you’re beginning to bore the hell out of me.

Go ahead. Make my day.

Dying ain’t much of a living, boy.

Don’t call me buddy, pal or sweetheart.

A good man always knows his limitations.

Bout time this town had a new sheriff.

You know, you’re going to look awfully silly with that knife sticking up your ass.

It’s a question of methods. Everybody wants results, but nobody wants to do what they have to do to get them done.

You’ve gotta ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?

When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.

Nobody calls me mister with my boots off.

God’s not on our side because he hates idiots, also.

You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

When a man’s got money in his pocket, he begins to appreciate peace.

Sometimes the dead can be more useful than the living.

You see, my mule don’t like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you’re laughin’ at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you’re going to, I might convince him that you really didn’t mean it.

I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up.

I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.

If somebody’s dumb enough to ask me to go to a political convention and say something, they’re going to have to take what they get.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

Nowadays, politically, everybody is promising everything. That’s the only way you can get elected.

I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21 because he promised to get us out of the Korean War.

Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you’re the mayor. The bad news is, now you’re the mayor.

There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down. When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.

I don’t like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I’d like to see somebody who’s going in the office. In fact, I’d like to not see them because that way you’d be sure that they’d be working.

Politicians love regulating. That’s part of the whole power structure.

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

I’m not really conservative. I’m conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don’t any more.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

In ‘Changeling,’ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

‘Unforgiven’ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‘This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.’ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

‘Mystic River’ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

I liked Vittorio De Sica a lot, and I got to work with him once in a segment movie. He was a great director. He was a very charismatic character and a guy I watched a lot when he was directing.

Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.

You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.

You hear about actors being late and all that sort of stuff, but you never find that with an actor who’s directed, because an actor who’s directed understands all the problems your production is going through.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

I probably would have retired years ago if I hadn’t found interesting things to do.

I think ‘Dirty Harry’ was probably sensitive toward the victims of violent crime.

There has to be something in every role that interests you.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality.

They’ve got this crazy actor who’s 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they’re probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

When I did ‘Bird,’ it was a surprise to some people, first because I wasn’t in it and second because most of the films I’d been doing were cop movies or westerns or adventure films, so to be doing one about Charlie Parker, who was a great influence on American music, was a great thrill for me.

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

I kind of make a film for myself to sort of express myself.

I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.

I always thought of myself as a character actor. I never thought of myself as a leading man.

When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment’s notice.

I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the ’60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.

Actors know, with me they aren’t going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‘If I could pull this off, I can someday move to the back of the camera and stay there.’

I’d always tried to resist playing the super virility thing. I liked showing the vulnerability of age.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money, I could have invaded some country.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

People love westerns worldwide. There’s something fantasy-like about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It’s a simpler time. There’s no organized laws and stuff.

Comedy isn’t necessarily all dialogue. Think of Buster Keaton: the poker face and all this chaos going on all around him. Sometimes it’s a question of timing, of the proper rhythm.

There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award, and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.

Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, ‘Clint, you must remember, it’s only a movie.

Other than obvious errors like forgetting a line, often I can’t see any difference between take one and take 20.

If you consider film an art form, as some people do, then the Western would be a truly American art form, much as jazz is.

I’m not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I’ve always liked the Buddhist religion. When I’ve been to Japan, I’ve been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

In ‘Gran Torino,’ I play a guy who’s racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you’re never too old to learn and embrace people that you don’t understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.

Prime time for men is, say, 35 to 45. Then they level off and fall off.

As you get older, you’re not afraid of doubt. Doubt isn’t running the show. You take out all the self-agonizing.

In school, I could hear the leaves rustle and go on a journey.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

I’m a mentor to anybody who’s interested.

I’m not really a Hollywood person. Not that I don’t like L.A., but I’m just a Northern California guy.

Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.

I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.

Some people feel that the world owes them a living.

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

You should never give up your inner self.

There are two kinds of people in this world. ‘I’ people and ‘we’ people. I’ve always tried to be a ‘we’ person.

I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.

Fate pulls you in different directions.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realization that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

I’m a day-to-day-type person.

The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.

Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.

I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

What you put into life is what you get out of it.

There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul.

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries.

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.