Kevin Costner quotes:

I think there are good men and women in all decades. We've grown cynical. And look at what we do to all our heroes: Churchill, FDR, Kennedy, they all had affairs. But heroic things happen every day.

Field of Dreams is probably our generation's It's A Wonderful Life.

I haven't lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that's from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them.

When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman's and it didn't bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors.

President Kennedy was willing to go to war. He was not a coward. The man had been in war and so had Ken O'Donnell. He was ready to protect this nation, but he was not ready for a military solution just because it was being rammed down his throat.

I'm a big fan of dreams. Unfortunately, dreams are our first casualty in life - people seem to give them up, quicker than anything, for a 'reality.'

I split my time between Santa Barbara and Aspen. I live on a pretty fast horse.

Money isn't a major motivating force in my life. Nor is my profession. There are other things that I care more about than being an actor.

We stand our best chance of leaving a legacy to those who want to learn, our children, by standing firm. In matters of style, hey, swing with the stream. But in matters of principle, you need to stand like a rock.

If you think of 'Liberty Valance' or 'The Searchers,' there are moments in there that you'll never, ever forget... And it does not matter what century you are from.

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away.

You have to decide if you're going to wilt like a daisy or if you're just going to go forward and live the life that you've been granted.

I had a difficult time hearing my own inner voice about what I wanted to be in this life, because there were all these perfect examples of what a man actually does. The notion is that he goes to college, gets married and provides. That's what a man does.

I don't give up. I'm a plodder. People come and go, but I stay the course.

Being a celebrity is probably the closest to being a beautiful woman as you can get.

There's real drama in performing live. You never know how it's going to be.

Here's the thing - the accent is cool. It's like a girl with big breasts - they get your attention first.

When a defining moment comes along, you define the moment, or the moment defines you.

When I make a film I'm away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say, I love his movies, I love his choices-because he loved them.

If you're willing to tell somebody that you love them, are you also willing to say you're sorry? You need to, even when you think you're in the right.

Failure doesn't kill you... it increases your desire to make something happen.

When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world, in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble.

I try to please myself. I don't try to anticipate what people want to see.

There are a lot of things that come to bear on movies now that I don't think are good for movies. They're trying to appeal to the biggest demographic and, when they do that, you sometimes flatten out.

I know I have this level of celebrity, of fame, international, national, whatever you want to call it, but it's a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you're in the middle of another famous person's life and you think to yourself, 'How the hell did I get famous? What is this some weird club that we're in?'

I dream of big things. I work for the small things. If you're going to dream, you might as well dream big. A lot of that came from my mother. She was adamant about the work ethic---about how you can't just dream things.

I haven't tried to buffer myself. I like rolling the dice.

I'm getting those familiar feelings, and I'm just going to enjoy the process of getting to know someone again.

I've been around where I knew other actors were going to steal the scene, and I don't compete with them.

I think one of the first things to go as people's lives start to go down is their dreams. Dreams should be the last thing to go - dreams are the things you go down with. If you're left clinging to a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean, I'd put on it the word dreams.

In my younger days, I used to pick up sluts, and I don't mean that nastily. It's more a term of endearment, really, for girls who know how to speak their minds.

I think if you want to make a good sports movie, you've got to cut down on the sports. You have to make it about people. You can't try to impress people with your knowledge and the X and O's and all the details and the technicalities.

If you want to make a great sports movie, don't put too much sports in it. It's the backdrop. It's the environment.

I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

I have a tremendous belief in people, not that people don't let me down, not that I haven't maybe let some people down. But I have a tremendous belief in people and in the common experience.

I was in the show for 21 days once-the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show, somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels all have room service, and the women all have long legs and brains.

You have to pick the stories that you want to be involved with and the end game is you'd like to be a part of a hit. But I think your moral obligation is to follow your own heart.

We all have to have our north star that we fix on and go to, but life is so much about the things that bump into you.

I believe people who go into politics want to do the right thing. And then they hit a big wall of re-election and the pettiness of politics. In the end, politics gets in the way of the business of people.

I'd like to put on buckskins and a ponytail and go underwater with a reed, hiding from the Indians... To me, that's sexy!

I was sucked into this vortex of a very conservative upbringing.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love, especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on, we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them, held their hand, looked in their eyes, been there.

If you're going to tear down a hero, you should never forget that you're tearing down someone else's hero. You're tearing down somebody else's son. You might have to face her one day.

Lincoln was the greatest speaker and he was ridiculed for how he looked, you know?

I don't have a seller's remorse about how I've lived.

I can't say I really see much difference between my son and daughters except that my girls will occasionally make me a sandwich and my son won't.

I have seen soldiers panic at the first sight of battle, and a squire pulling arrows from his body to fight and save his dying horse. Nobility is not a birthright, but is defined by one's actions.

In America, politicians do whatever to get re-elected, and a lot of decisions that were being made at that time by Kennedy were certain not to get him re-elected.

I think these movies are as much for people of that time as for people who weren't born. For people who weren't born, they see how leaders must act under a crisis situation, not trying to be re-elected or not trying to check polls, that they go from their gut check.

I wanted very much to do Traffic and at one point it looked like I was going to work on it. And then, of course, Catherine Zeta-Jones had her relationship with Michael Douglas and it suddenly didn't happen.

You're this rat in the American maze, working your way towards the cheese, which is a job.

I stand up for what I believe. I don't know if it's always paid off for me, because I've been ridiculed and humiliated.

I am not a cynic.

I'm glad movies aren't going to please everybody, they can't. But what they have to be is recognisable. I don't equate myself with a master painter, but I think you can recognise my films.

I'm a pretty convenient foil for a lot of people.

I enjoy sports. I get a real joy from playing sports but I don't look for those movies. Oliver Stone wanted to know if I would do Any Given Sunday and it just didn't appeal to me.

I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched.

I want to live forever, and I know I won't. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm only afraid of one thing: not being able to raise my kids.

I've had some movies that have been ridiculed, but that's OK with me. I don't feel that really defines me. Should I change who I am to be popular?

If you don't understand your limitations you won't achieve much in your life.

A good idea is something like an emotion, you just can't keep it in.

Audiences trust Westerns when you hit the right tone. I think they're not in vogue, but they will always be in vogue when you hit the right note.

Broken people say awful things and do incredibly absurd things.

Conventional wisdom can get us into so much trouble, especially as artists.

Conventional wisdom is so scary because what if everybody's wrong?

Cowboy movies aren't supposed to be in vogue. I still like them. You know, I'm still out there pitching the hell out of them.

Great stories don't often make great movies. Its' a crafted art form.

I actually play sports better when I'm mad. Some players don't play better when they're mad. They lose their sense of where they're at. I have a tendency to do better when I'm under pressure.

I always thought the leading actor should be the best supporting actor, because you're the only person that can help every other actor on the set.

I am a really writer-oriented actor.

I believe in the soul ... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.

I deal with pressure. I have a tendency to probably be at my best under pressure.

I didn't realize Toronto was so beautiful. Everywhere you go you see beautiful architecture.

I don't go against the grain because I'm a contrary person.

I don't read as much as I'd like. I've been writing a lot. I've been doing a lot of music, but I don't read as much as I should. I just don't.

I don't take much stock in other people's opinions if I think something's good.

I don't think I ever take huge risks, though I'm not scared of doing so.

I don't think I'd have been as good as Bruce was. He was a better JFK than I would have been.

I feel like I've been able to live a dream life, but my view of things is absolutely inside behavior about how I behave and how I count on other people behaving.

I have instinctually thought I could do things in my life, and I followed that up by sometimes putting everything I have at risk - my money, my house - to make a movie.

I just tried to build on my failures.

I like American history.

I like being around people that mean what they say.

I like four-hour movies.

I like when my face tingles, when the hair on the back of my neck stands up.

I think I just wanted to work when I finally came to Hollywood. That's what it was. I wanted to get a job, and then I wanted to get the second one.

I think I'm a pretty right down the middle guy. I just think that's kind of who I am. I'm not afraid of my own journey.

I think it's hard for people to suspend the era they live in and understand the decisions that had to be made often during the western [frontier era] were life and death. You had to be resourceful and on your feet to try to figure out somebody. You didn't have the benefit of knowing who somebody was.

I think religion is a funny thing because, when you see somebody who can really break it down, sometimes it feels foolish what you believe.

I think that you try to raise the bar on whatever you do because you know, in this day of having to deal with a lot of reality TV, people say that scripted programming is dying, so you have to try to create something that can live in people's minds, long after they see it.

I think there's true drama in the formation of everything that we know and are standing on the shoulders of.

I wait and take on projects that I think can work.

I want to be a part of something, and when we define movies now based on how they do on the weekend. We live in a society of "thumbs up, thumbs down."

I was always listening to my father more than anyone. I was always afraid of my father more than anyone. But there's a moment in time where other men in your life can have a huge impact.

I will never forget what happened here tonight.people I went to school with will never forget.

I work for the public, for the people who are paying to go to the cinema, rather than for the critics.

I would hate to see a UFO. Because it would ruin my life. I would have to talk about it the rest of my life, and everybody in the room would go, "Poor Kevin." Because you could not turn your back on the idea that you saw it.

I wouldn't do the movie unless I thought it had a chance to be good.

If it's fifty years from now and it still has the same value, that's a movie.

If it's going to be wrecked, I want to make sure I wreck it.

If somebody said my wife's not beautiful, I'd go, she is. I wouldn't say, really? No, she is. I know she is. In my mind, you know.

I'm a coach's coaching player. I like to be on the floor. So, if the coach tells me what to do out on the floor, I can get it done. I'm really comfortable being directed.

I'm a 'what if' person. I have always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience. I have taken blows. I have had high moments. But I don't think the blows have ever hardened me. My enthusiasms are still big.

I'm in a position where whatever I do, I can get my head handed to me. I'm in a position to fail because there is a whole group of people out there who want me to fail. It's a weird vibe.

I'm not defining my band by other people's music, but by my own.

I'm only interested in being a good actor and in being remembered for my best films, not for the way I look. But it seems inevitable in this line of work that I have to care about the way I look without getting obsessed about it.

I'm proud of all the movies I've made. They're not sequels, they're not franchises. And the reason I pick my films carefully is that I don't want to spit on my life. I like to think of myself as more than that.

It sounds vain, but I could probably make a difference for almost everyone I ever met if I chose to involve myself with them either professionally or personally.

It was an experience of a lifetime to sit only a few feet away from him [Castro] and watch him relive an experience he lived as a very young man.

It's never bothered me to work hard. I've probably worked on some of the longest schedules in movie history.

It's nice to be wanted in almost any capacity.

It's nice to be wanted. That's a really good feeling. I'm not immune to it.

It's such a cool thing in life to get what it is you want. Most of the time we don't, but occasionally we do.

I've always been distracted when somebody is coming after me and saying, "You're the only person who can play this part."

I've always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience.

I've always known that I'm a little out of vogue.

I've been able to do a lot of things in the movies. I've been able to run with the buffalo, you know. I've been able to pitch a perfect game in Yankee Stadium. I've been in the bathtub with Susan Sarandon. I've had a lot of chances to do a lot of things. I enjoy sports, but I enjoy sports so much to the point that I wouldn't do the movie unless I thought it had a chance to be good.

I've been evolving in my stunt career Stunts have always had their place, and I have to measure them now. I've done things where, if I make a mistake, I could die. You really need to look at each thing. That usually is a mechanical failure. So, I have gone from doing everything, to listening and saying, "Maybe I shouldn't do this."

I've had moments in my life where it was all out on the table. Everything I had. I'm okay with that, because I had a strong belief that what I was doing other people could believe in it, too, if I can get it just right.

I've never changed my approach to acting. I've always felt like I've gotten better. I think that all of us can get better. I feel like, in my acting, I'm better than I was three pictures ago. I think about it. I'm a slow study. It takes me a long time to grasp the material, in order to perform it. But when I come to the set, on the first day, I know the whole movie. That's why I have to start early.