TOMMY LEE JONES

I don't think I would describe my sense of humor. Doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd do.

My home town is very small and very remote and we don't have a movie house.

I've never really known what glamour is.

I don't direct movies for a living.

Ethnic stereotypes are boring and stressful and sometimes criminal. It's just not a good way to think. It's non-thinking. It's stupid and destructive.

Characters with no integrity are just as interesting as characters with lots of integrity.

I haven't had a lot of comedy come my way as a performer.

The most important question in American cinema, I've learned, is 'When is lunch?'

My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you're not strictly bound to a linear narrative.

It's no fun to be a struggling young actor. It's a desperate thing, no way to be happy. If you have any alternative, you should take it.

I'm always happy to have a job.

Acting is fun for me and it doesn't really matter how, whether it's hard work or easy work, it's always fun.

You know, I don't really think you have to play nice guys.

I look upon pride as a sin.

I've made some bad movies. And I really enjoyed it!

I don't get it. If you're saying, Tommy Lee, you don't fit the image of the East Coast, social elitist wealthy people who comprise Harvard, the only thing I can say is you have no idea what comprises Harvard.

The tactic of leading people into... a war that doesn't make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they're unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn't intimidate me.

I have worked on very good movies that have been buried, and I've worked on some resounding mediocrities that have been paraded through the marketplace like they were masterpieces.

Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They're underused.

Human beings are glorious and preposterous characters.

Cormac McCarthy's language is perfect. He is in my view the greatest living American prose stylist.

In the political world, the only position I have is voter. I'm not a spokesman for anything.

I'm a hedonist.

I'm a believer in belief. Faith is something that works - it causes people to do things, it has results. It's an intangible, indefinable, very real thing. And it moves people, sometimes to atrocity. And sometimes to survival.

I haven't a clue if there is life on other planets but I'd be charmed if we found a unicellular organism on Mars. It would change our whole concept of life on Earth.