Billy Bob Thornton quotes:

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

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.

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.

I used to put that I studied with Stella Adler on my resume. I never met Stella Adler. But if you told a casting director you studied with Stella Adler all the sudden they'd let you in the door.

Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What's that all about? I've got kids and family and friends, and I don't like bad things. I don't think they're funny, and it's irresponsible to make movies that don't show you how that's not good.

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

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?

Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there.

They were on the set of Bad Santa but I tried to keep the headphones away from them. My kids have seen Sling Blade, they've seen Armageddon, Bandits and Friday Night Lights. They have not seen Monster's Ball, nor will they ever, even when they're sixty [laughter]. I will leave it in my will that they can never see it.

Tower Records is like a temple to me. I'll stay there for hours. Nobody can shop for records with me. It drives them out of their minds.

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.

Getting the nomination is like gravy. Winning would be like whatever is better than gravy.

At my dad's funeral I didn't cry when my dad died. I did it years later when I forgave him, which I've totally forgiven him and I loved my dad.

If someone is talking to you and tells you that you ought to do something, and you can tell they mean it, those are the scary people. Those are the people you want to watch out for.

I don't have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing.

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.

I don't see anything wrong with a cell phone. That's great. You have a flat tire in the middle of the night; it works better than digging in your pocket for a quarter and looking for a payphone eight miles down the road.

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.

I quit flying years ago. I don't want to die with tourists.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.

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.

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.

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

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

When you're a director, for two years or at least a year and a half, that's what your life is. So if you're gonna do it, you gotta be ready to do it and it has to be something you care about. I've found something that I do care about.

I figured I would have to tell someone to kiss my ass before it was all over, and I have -- twice.

I don't like movies that are shot on green screen much, you know. I mean, I know that's the thing to do, and I know that it's getting. I'll put it this way; David Lean would probably kill himself, you know, again if he knew that people were watching Lawrence of Arabia on a telephone.

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.

I worked as a roadie in the rock and roll business which was great fun. Very little money, very little food and the whole thing about the roadie's lifestyle is great because all the groupies have to go through the roadies to get to the rock stars. It's not necessarily true.

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.

Usually when I'm writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.

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.

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.

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.

Just the other day, my assistant was on the line with Calvin Klein. Golly, I usually shop at Sears.

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

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.

You can't knock a place where you realized your dreams.

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.

I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers.

We didn't have a movie theatre until I was about nine, so I just didn't see them. But, once I got into movies I loved them.

Marketing is the devil.

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.

As most characters are that I play, there's a lot of me in it, anyway.

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.

Usually when you're playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory.

The independent film business is pretty much gone. Now you can do it in a format where you actually get to develop a character over a period of time.

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.

If you love somebody let them know every day.

We don't shoot in L.A. much anymore. You know, TV and movies, most everything's shot other places.

You want to know the hardest thing about being smart? What? I pretty much always know what's going to happen next; there's no suspense.

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.

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.

Life is magical and I guess my thing is I wish that people wanted that magic.

I'm not really a guy who wants to be a director, anyway.

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.

I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.

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.

Now the idea in the movie world is to make things the same. And in the TV world, the idea is to do something different, so... that's why I'm here!

It's the hardest thing in the world to be in a business where it's all about people accepting you, and you have a desperate need to be accepted, and yet you live in a, you operate in a society that's now very unaccepting.

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.

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.

I'm not sure that I'm really relevant as a director anymore. Or as a writer, either, to tell you the truth.

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

Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn't let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn't one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you're perfect!

I know that I loved music before I loved movies, simply because I didn't see movies as a kid.

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

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.

People think you have to be tortured or miserable to write, but I'm finding that I get inspired a lot more these days before I'm happy.

My songs aren't built around choruses or hooks or anything like that. That's kind of how I write screenplays too.

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

Sometimes I have songs born out of stories.

I think Americana music is music that is generally more singer/songwriter oriented. It has more to do with the songwriting. The music, it's more like stories set to music.

I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.

I write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it.

[The lyrics and melody] usually come a little simultaneously, but I would say the lyrics are first; usually I have the idea for a story in my head, or few lines.

These days and times you can't do eclectic records. In the '60s you could, but not anymore.

People's attention spans are a little shorter these days. Same thing with food and movies.

Usually with film writing I start with characters, and set about writing their story.

Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.

I think my stuff's kind of obsolete now, you know? I'm making Model Ts or something, and everybody else is making spaceships.

I think everybody's contemplating TV now, because mid-level and high-budget independent films are not being made now.

If you're going to take care of your kids and pay for your house and do something good for adults, you have to do something on television now.

If you look at a character as a mountain over there that you have to climb, then I think you've lost 50 percent of the air.

I've led a very eclectic life.

You have to really know what you're saying.

I tend to like to move on. I don't sit around and dwell on things much.

You never know what an audience is going to think about something. The ones that the audience doesn't get, I tend to let them go. I don't like to dwell on them too much.

The ones that work out really and ones that become something to the audience, those are the most important people.

The audience, that's who I care about.

If something really strikes a chord with an audience, if it pops on TV, I don't mind watching it for a few minutes.

I'm not a TV junkie outside of sports and history really and stuff like that.

Every character I play is me, always has been.

To tell you the truth, I don't ever talk about characters as separate from myself.

Nowadays the movies that people are going to see in the theaters are the big-event movies, like Spider-Man or something, or they're 25-year-old models who are vampires, or they're very broad comedies, or they're standard action movies. So if you're going to work for a studio and do a movie for the budget that the movie needs, those are the kinds of movies you'll be in.

I don't think anybody chooses to be an underdog.

Now, if you want to do realistic, kind of heavier acting stuff, you do it on Amazon or Netflix or whatever or HBO.

Independent films now, they want to give you $2 million to make it, 21 days to shoot it and they want 10 movie stars in it.

People always like stories about the little guy fighting the big guy.

I always wanted to play a lawyer.

When I was coming up, if you were on a TV show, that meant something was wrong with your career. Now it means something's right with your career.

The great movies that I want to do now are being made for $2.5-million budgets.

LA has its own vibe. It has a charm that a lot of people overlook sometimes.

I love acting with all my heart and I love music with all my heart.

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

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.

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.

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.

If you're in the heyday of rock and roll and movies, and that's where I grew up. We didn't have to look for it. We didn't have to create angst. We didn't have to create desire. We didn't have to say, see we were screwed, my generation, because we wanted to be The Beatles or Elvis Presley. That ain't going to happen. So we always had this thing to reach for.

People over 40 stay home and watch television, that's why there are no movies out there.

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.

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.

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

I didn't cry at my father's funeral, and I felt guilty about that. Of course, he got sick not too long after he and I had had that final altercation, and I felt real guilty because of that, too. Then years later, one day, I was probably in my late twenties, early thirties, and I just broke down crying, because I finally got my father.

If you looked in magazines ... you never see me in those out-on-the-town pages. I'm either at home playing with the kids or I'm working.

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.

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.

I don't know how to type so I handwrite everything.